My husband and I had driven to a friend’s new house in Westchester, where she was serving us cake and tea. I was puzzled.
“Why is it that whenever we come here, the trip always takes at least an hour, whereas the trip home is half that, or less? And I don’t think it’s the traffic, because last time there wasn’t any.”
“It’s the same thing for me!” said the friend. “Only in reverse. What I mean is, when I’m driving to you it takes me so long to get there — and no time at all to get home!”
“I have a theory,” my husband volunteered.
“I know all about your theory, and it’s wrong,” I tell him. I know what’s coming. “You always say that I think every trip home takes just five minutes — the five minutes it takes for me to fall asleep.”
“But he’s wrong, of course,” I continue, turning to my friend. “I don’t trust his driving enough to fall asleep.”
My personal theory is that it’s all about paying attention. On the trip out to anywhere, as soon as we’ve left the driveway I am listening to traffic reports on the radio; watching for bad drivers; looking for road signs in unfamiliar territory; feeling every bump and pothole in the road. Whereas on the trip home, we are soon back in familiar territory, and the rest of the way is just on autopilot.
“Oh! You’re talking about ‘mindfulness,’ ” says my friend.
“What’s that?” asks my spouse.
“Oh, it’s something from yoga and meditation,” she tells him. “It’s a kind of hyperawareness.”
Lots of people nowadays are big on mindfulness. Everyone from Gwyneth Paltrow to the local yoga instructor is preaching about it — how you should notice every sensation, for every blessed thing you do, whether it’s walking around the block, posing for yoga, or just eating a raisin.
“I like it,” says my beloved. “At least it sounds cheap!”
I guess that’s true — and maybe it helps you enjoy things … but it all sounds exhausting. Just eating a piece of cake can become a chore!
I decide to demonstrate: “Now I am slicing my fork down into the cake…now I’m lifting it up to my mouth…my mouth is watering in anticipation…oops! Now the cake has fallen into my lap, making a mess… and rolled onto the floor… Stop laughing!” I try to reach down and drop my napkin over the cake, to pick it all up. “Darn, now I’ve pulled a muscle!”
“So much for mindfulness,” my husband said. “It’s time to head home.” He was balancing a box with the remains of the cake, while he fished for his keys.
“Let me take that,” I said. “We can practice more ‘mindfulness’ when we get home.”
“You know, there’s a state of mind I like even better,” he said, once we were back on the road. “It’s called ‘flow.’”
“I know that one,” I replied. “It’s being creative and ‘in the zone,’ to the point you lose track of space and time. But are you an artist? Or a jazz composer? Because that’s the usual context.”
“Software engineers can be creative, too, you know.”
In something between five minutes and 30, we were home. Once in the door, I made tea so we could finish the cake.
“You know, I heard something about this, on NPR,” I said. “Neuroscientists work with rap musicians, looking at their brains in two different states: one while they’re improvising new material, and another while they’re reciting stuff they already know.”
“Slice?”
“God, no! They just lie down in an MRI machine!”
“I meant, the cake.”
“Oh! No thanks. Anyway — they found that when the rappers were writing material, several brain parts were active, but not the part that does self-criticism. Dwelling on that can block up your creativity. So now I’m conflicted.”
“How so?” he asked, reaching over me for the cake.
“Well, mindfulness is good for stretching out time and paying attention to something good. But to be creative, I need to forget time, and details, altogether. I’m not sure which I prefer. I guess you could say, when it comes to mindfulness, I’m of two minds about it.”
“Well, that’s a good thing.”
“Why is that?”
“Because then, when you’ve completely lost one of them, you’ll still have a spare!” And with that, he polished off the cake.
