Last week, I led two eating meditations: one in my Mindful Student seminar, and one in a workshop for the Collat School of Business. I was reminded of one student’s reaction last fall. After 45 minutes of eating excruciatingly slowly in silence, I asked what they thought.
One of my more extroverted students exclaimed, “The eating meditation was LIT! I started out thinking: do I even like raisins? It’s been so long since I ate raisins. Then I realized, I DO like raisins! I’d forgotten about them, but I really like them. Then I asked myself, WHAT ELSE IN MY LIFE IS A RAISIN?!?!?”
After we stopped laughing, we discussed how profound his realization actually was.
Our lives are so packed, we might just inhale our meals, barely tasting them. We forget that there are millions of people on this planet that don’t have enough to eat while we gorge on whatever is available, often while doing something else like scrolling through social media. If we paid attention to even the first bite, we might experience each meal completely differently. What if we paid attention to the people we are with while we eat? Or even paid attention to ourselves, noting how we’re feeling? Are we even hungry? What (and how much) do we actually WANT to eat? It’s so easy to forget how many people are responsible for bringing us a simple box of raisins. It takes many hands to bring us that small treat. Taking time to savor a bit of gratitude for that convenience can radically alter your perspective.
What my dear student realized was worth considering on a deeper level. How many things that we truly enjoy in our lives do we forget about, pass by, or dismiss in some way? There might be little joys every day that we race past, somehow (even perhaps unconsciously) thinking that they’re unimportant or unworthy of our time or attention. It’s easy to forget that real life is lived in those small moments: the taste of food, the smile of a friend across the dinner table, the driver who allows us to merge onto the highway, the full moon the other night. The list, if you explore it, could be nearly endless.
As musicians, we might get trapped in repertoire ruts. There’s so much music to learn, and so little time. Have you forgotten that you actually enjoy a few of those 24 Italian Songs and Arias, that song by Journey, or that you meant to explore new repertoire by a long-neglected composer? Why not take the time now to [re]discover what you love? It could change your day, your student’s week, or your research trajectory.
What else in your life is a raisin?