Good morning everyone. I trust we’ve all intended our day to be a good one. My CBC column has been deferred by COVID to tomorrow, so while the normal announcement about the subject (and eventually the transcript) was below, I will be moving it tomorrow’s post, along with the transcript and audio. We’ll still do our gratitude meditation today.
Even though the column has been deferred, we can still use tomorrow’s column as inspiration. The only reason anyone will hear Adrienne and I on the radio tomorrow is thanks to all of the technology we’re surrounded by every day. Phones, TV’s, radios, the electrical grid, the web, the internet, GPS, air conditioning, medical devices, musical instruments etc. etc. etc.
Our cities are filled with power, and all of the wiring and cables and antenna’s required to make all of our technology work. Massive numbers of smart people keep very busy keeping all of it running.
But despite how remarkable the entire system is, we barely muster any gratitude when it all comes together to microwave our soup in under a minute and half. Even just the button on a crosswalk provides safety and convenience, but we rarely give it a thought.
These things being true, today, as we drive, ride, or walk; in our homes, cars, offices, or wherever we may be in our travels, we can take today’s idle time to try to truly notice how often we interact with technology, and how much it improves our lives.
If we don’t notice things we can’t appreciate them as a form of meditation. And appreciation is a very pleasant experience for anyone. That’s why it’s worth ‘noticing’ anything that deserves it. Even the daily technology we tend to take for granted.
Imagine your life without technology. Your phone. Your electricity. Your car. A train. A plane. Imagine going into a hospital with no equipment. These are not small things to be grateful for. We just aren’t taught to give those things our full attention, so we often fail to notice that value.
We’ll know if we’re doing these meditations properly because gratitude feels good. But we have to get over feeling silly about life’s more subtle reasons to be grateful. As long as we feel grateful, we’re not being silly about our subject matter. Because that subject matter is the quality of our life. So if our tech makes our quality of life better, then we should enjoy being grateful for that.
peace. s
A serious childhood brain injury lead Scott to spend his entire life meditating on the concepts of thought, consciousness, reality and identity. It made others as strange to him as he was to them. When he realized people were confused by their own over-thinking, Scott began teaching others to understand reality. He is currently CBC Radio Active’s Wellness Columnist, as well as a writer, speaker and mindfulness instructor based in Edmonton, AB where he still finds it strange to write about himself in the third person.