Finding pleasure in simplicity – Corona takeaways

It’s nine o’clock in the morning. A loud gong chime reverbs back and forth in the lush green valley, one hour outside Madurai in Tamil Nadu, India. The long-anticipated sound gives me relief. At last, I can succumb to the screaming pain in my knees and raise up. For the last hour, I have been sitting completely still, in a cross-legged position, only focusing on sensations in my body. Now, it’s time for a fifteen minutes break before the next two-hour meditation session starts.

As I walk out from the meditation hall and into the warm morning sun, I make sure to avoid eye contact with the other participants. The rules of the retreat are clear: no interaction with the other participants or the rest of the world during the nine first days of the ten-day meditation retreat. That means, no talking, no eye contact, no signaling to each other, no use of technology, no reading material, no notebooks, no external input whatsoever. The point is to create space for you to dig deep into your own mind by sheltering you from all interruptions and demands from normal life.

 

Strolling up to the simple quarters where I sleep, I realize that I’ve never felt so peaceful before. The strict rules of the retreat, prohibit me from doing anything else than just to sit down on a pillow to meditate for ten hours a day, eat and sleep. In one way, I feel like I’m in prison; I can’t do all the things I usually do. In another way, I feel liberated for the same reason. I’m unshackled from my habits. I’m free to focus on a few simple things, such as being more present.

Entering my room, I feel a sense of excitement. It’s time for the daily laundry session. The simple ritual of handwashing my clothes has become one of the highlights of the day, together with eating the three daily meals we are served.

As I fill up the bucket with hot water, I can’t help but feel surprised about the satisfaction I get from laundering. Back in Norway, I suffer in intense agony from doing any type of household chores. Cleaning steals time from everything else I crave doing! But here, for some reason, I enjoy it! How come?

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Fast forward one and a half months. I’m back in freezing Norway. The Coronavirus has a tight grip on the global society, forcing us to put our communities in lockdown mode. Suddenly, we can’t do most of the things we used to do for pleasure or presumed necessity. We find ourselves unable to go into the office, prohibited from traveling to our cherished weekend retreats and barred from BBQ-ing with our friends. Furthermore, reduced job security and a dwindling economy, make us more careful with how we spend our money.

The only relief is that everyone else is in the same boat. Virtually nobody is posting pictures on social media from fancy vacations and great parties these days. If people were posting, you would likely feel even worse!

Many of us feel like we are imprisoned. We can’t do what we usually do nor all the things we want to do.

But, you may also feel liberated. As I experienced at the meditation retreat, you may also experience that finding yourself in prison, figuratively speaking, releases you to find pleasure from simpler and deeper things. Believe it or not, you may even start enjoying laundering, as extreme as that may sound!

Before Corona, maybe you were looking forward to some exciting and fancy weekend trips to New York or Paris during the spring. Unfortunately, Corona has effectively canceled those plans. Now, you may find pleasure from a simple walk with your spouse in the nearby forest. 

Prior to Corona, maybe you had a dream of upgrading your home cinema system. Now, thanks to Corona, you keep your wallet sealed tight. Instead, you invest in a new book to read.

Earlier, maybe your instinct was to fly into any, seemingly important, business meeting. Now, thanks to Corona, you just set up an online meeting.

The point is, Corona fundamentally shakes things up. The virus challenges all the things we usually do and the things we think are important. Therefore, if we, for a minute, look away from all the suffering and tragic deaths Corona brings to our fellow humans, we may find that Corona is a great opportunity for personal and societal growth. From this involuntary experiment, we can all learn to appreciate simpler and deeper things.

In a time with reduced external input, we can reconnect to ourselves. For Instance, we can learn to reduce our consumption and environmental footprint. In other words, we can learn how to live a bit more in harmony with the natural ecosystem that we all ultimately depend on.

So, if you find yourself in lockdown mode, suddenly having some time available for yourself, you may want to grab the learning opportunity.

Ask yourself the following questions:

1. What new pleasurable activities have I discovered during lockdown that I would love to continue doing when society opens up again?
2. What new ways of doing things do you want to keep up when society opens up again?

Your answers need not involve radical changes. Baby steps are great! And, if you make it into a habit to frequently ask yourself such questions, a large collection of baby steps will over time turn into big leaps.

Let me give you some examples.

Personally, over the last few weeks, I have identified the following three ways of doing things differently to what I usually do:

Firstly, going forward I will introduce more downtime to my life. I will do this by giving myself longer deadlines and by being less ambitious in my weekly planning. Slowing down and doing less for a period, such as during this Corona lockdown, makes it easier to connect to your own needs and desires. It’s priceless to have the time and space to ask yourself simple questions, such as: “What do you want to get out of this week?” or “How can you make this week more exciting or meaningful?”. Busyness increases stress. Stress makes you unconsciously follow old habits. Old habits may or may not be aligned with what you really want, and may, therefore, be less effective.

Secondly, I have realized that the home-office beats any fancy corporate office: zero time wasted on commuting, eating a freshly cooked lunch together with my wife and enjoying a daily coffee break on our sunny terrace. What can be better than that? Besides, I have discovered that many physical meetings can be replaced by an asynchronous discussion on MS Teams / Slack.

Thirdly, long walks in the nearby forest, combined with a delicious picnic in nature, are both exciting and gives peace to my soul. I want more of this going forward. As a consequence, I assume I will have less need for fancy restaurants and city-vacations abroad.

So, that was a few simple examples for my side.

What have you learned from the Corona-crisis so far? Please, share some of your own reflections in the comments section below!

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Cheers,

Jostein