Mind Strategies for Avoiding the Now The human mind is a problem-solving device.
That's its job.
It scans constantly for things to fix,
Improve,
Optimize,
Or avoid the same way the stomach scans for food.
But here's something worth noticing.
To have a problem,
You need a solution.
And that solution always lives somewhere in the future.
And the curious thing about the future is,
You can never actually arrive there.
So what you really have isn't a problem,
You have a situation.
And with a situation,
You always have options.
You can act,
You can plan to act,
Or if nothing can be done,
You can accept it and move on.
The mind isn't very fond of that last option.
From problem to situation.
Let's say there's an alarm going off outside your house.
Getting upset about the alarm doesn't help,
But you do have choices.
You could call the police.
If it's safe,
You could investigate it yourself.
If it's in the middle of the night and nothing can be done,
You can plan to deal with it in the morning.
And then you're still left with the sound.
At that point,
You could put in earplugs,
Move to another room,
Or,
If none of that is possible,
You could meet the sound directly.
Instead of labelling it as annoying,
You could listen more closely.
Notice its rhythm,
Its pitch,
Its texture.
You might even try something slightly counterintuitive,
Amplifying it with your awareness.
This is one of my favourite experiments.
The mind struggles with amplification,
It wants control.
And when you step toward the discomfort instead of away from it,
The mind often panics and starts looking for a different problem to solve.
It sounds absurd,
But it works remarkably well.
Because the mind isn't really a problem-solving device,
It's a problem-creating device.
Boredom.
The mind's emergency signal.
Boredom is a great example.
Boredom isn't a lack of stimulation.
Boredom happens when the mind runs out of labels.
The mind labels everything in order to feel safe.
This is a chair,
This is sweet,
This is boring.
But a label isn't the experience.
You can label a flavour as sweet,
But try describing sweetness to someone who's never tasted it.
You can use every word you know and still miss it.
But the moment sweetness is experience,
Understanding is immediate.
Not because of the label,
But because of the experience.
The mind loves labels because once something is labelled,
It stops looking.
It feels settled.
At least until it gets bored again.
Labels without experience.
I remember singing songs as a kid,
Completely convinced I knew all the lyrics,
Only to discover later I'd been singing them entirely wrong.
The labels were good enough for the mind.
At school,
We memorised names,
Dates,
Facts.
And I remember wondering why so much of it mattered.
I understand now that it trains the mind.
But sometimes I wonder if we over-train it.
We collect facts with no lived experience behind them and mistake that for understanding.
It's far richer to have an experience you can't describe than a label with nothing underneath it.
As a child,
My greatest fear was boredom.
Death even seemed preferable to boredom,
Which feels ridiculous now,
But boredom was terrifying because it exposed the mind's emptiness.
No stories,
No drama,
Just this.
Drama as distraction.
Another way the mind avoids the present moment is by creating drama around the past and future.
I remember sitting quietly with my dad once,
Just sharing a cup of tea.
After a while,
He started reminiscing about the past.
I said,
Dad,
The past has gone.
We can't get to it anymore.
I suggested we talk about what's happening now.
He replied,
The present moment is boring.
And from the mind's point of view,
He was right.
No catastrophe,
No excitement,
No narrative arc.
Just two people,
Sitting quietly,
Enjoying a moment.
And yet,
Isn't that exactly what people long for at the end of their lives?
One more ordinary day,
One more quiet cup of tea with someone they love.
The mind as a noisy flatmate.
The mind is like a noisy flatmate who never stops talking,
Complaining about the weather,
Other people,
Rules being broken.
After a while,
You start believing it.
You become reactive,
Easily irritated,
Lost in thought.
It's like being trapped in a maze of your own creation,
Paralyzed by analysis,
Overwhelmed by indecision.
You hand the steering wheel to the mind and sit in the back seat,
Hoping it knows where it's going.
It doesn't.
But the moment you notice this is just thought,
The spell begins to loosen.
Turning life into a means to an end.
Another trick of the mind is turning the present moment into a means to an end.
You're chopping carrots,
But your mind is already at dinner,
So the chopping becomes something to rush through.
Many people live their entire working lives like this,
Working for money,
Waiting for retirement,
Pushing through years of experience like a zombie.
Yes,
Sometimes we need to do work we don't love.
But do we also need to turn it into misery?
Anything can become peaceful when it's met with full attention.
Meditation,
Sleep and winding down.
When I suggest meditation,
People often say,
I can't,
My mind is too noisy.
That always makes me smile.
That's exactly why we meditate.
You don't need to be good at it.
You don't need to be a world-class eater to benefit from food.
You just need nourishment to get past your gums.
If you're wound up,
Doing more winding up activities won't help.
You need to wind down,
Even briefly.
Sleep is important,
But sleep reflects your waking life.
When your days are chaotic,
Your nights usually are too.
Meditation isn't escape,
It's sanity.
The illusion of importance.
The mind also distracts you by convincing you that everything depends on you,
That your role is irreplaceable.
But if you disappeared tomorrow,
The world would keep turning.
There would be grief,
There would be adjustment,
But life would continue.
When you believe that you're carrying the weight of the world,
The present moment becomes something to endure rather than inhabit,
And that's a terrible waste.
Coming home to now.
If you look closely,
You'll see that the mind creates endless drama in its search for peace,
And never finds it.
Peace isn't in the next thought.
It's here,
In this moment,
When you stop believing the noise.
In a moment,
I'll let the words fade,
And we'll sojourn into the present moment.
There's nothing you need to do,
No technique,
No effort.
Just allow the sound to carry you like breath,
Like wind moving through trees.
And slowly coming back.
Thank you for spending this time with me.
As you move back into your day,
I invite you to stay curious.
Notice how often the mind tries to pull you away from now,
And gently return.
Lean into the spaciousness,
Into the quiet,
Meditating universe,
That's always here beneath the noise.
You don't need to fix anything.
You don't need to escape.
Just listen.
Until next time,
Take care,
And be gentle with yourself.
