10 Books for mindfulness
those holed up at home, the pandemic has stripped away the given minutiae of everyday living – the commutes, the casual asides, the inessential errands. In doing so, it’s also provided us with a rare opportunity to get outside the slipstream of movement and productivity; the doing, doing, doing that can keep you feeling like a tumbleweed in a strong wind. Right now, things are oddly still. And if you’re privileged enough to have health and work – and not to have your stillness disrupted by anxiety and fear – inside the carousel of monotony, you might nd some space for self-re ection, to consider what you want ‘normal’ life to look like when isolation comes to an end.
I’ve been lucky enough to get to do some of that selfexamination as part of my job at GQ. In that time, I’ve spent an inordinate amount of time reading books that have helped me do it. ey’re about everything from building better habits to getting better at being bored to the therapeutic, healing power of psychedelics. And though a fair number, perhaps unsurprisingly, stress the importance of stillness (you can’t swing a cat in a self-help section of a bookstore without hitting this Blaise
Pascal quote: “All of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone”), each is really about autonomy: in a world of constant noise and distraction, how can we live intentionally?
e idea here isn’t that you should use your time in isolation productively – that type of thinking can lead right back into the whitewater of busyness (not to mention that, as ever, any type of self-care or self-improvement remains the province of the privileged). Right now, the only prescription should be to protect your mental health in whatever way’s best for you. Over the past couple of years, these books have a orded me a deeper sense of agency and control in an unpredictable world.
It’s less ‘a guide to being idle that’ll help unlock the secret to inner joy!’ than it is an examination of why we all feel so existentially unmoored (hint: it has to do with how we spend our attention) and how we might go forward from here.