Participation trophies
Life is one big participation trophy, there are innumerable rewards just for showing up. Yet so often in life we just go through the motions, like amusement park mechanical cars on the fixed tracks of some child’s ride, following a predetermined path with no intent. We live in mindlessness. Truly participating, truly being present, true mindfulness is wrought instead with purpose and focus.
Participation is the third of our mindfulness “what” skills. The prerequisites for this progression are having both observed and described our environment and ourselves. We know what we look like both inside and out and we can describe with granularity our feelings and thoughts. Now we must take hold and be active participants in our present moment.
We throw ourselves into mindful action, it is not a passive slide. Think of Michael Jordan with a basketball; while it may appear that he’s not even thinking his focus is that of intense focus and immense presence of being. For someone like MJ, time slows down. He is the epitome of Csíkszentmihályi’s concept of flow.
We cannot achieve this flow state in sport or art or even in eating a meal without hours of practice, and even then it may be fleeting for us mere mortals. But those fleeting moments give us a peek into the potential of the human experience, they allow each of us to touch greatness.
The best part of this participating practice of mindfulness is that it can be about joy. Dancing and singing and laughing with your entirety. Allowing yourself to embrace movement or sport without self-consciousness, being in the moment. A PR lift, a family sing along, or any number of moments of jiu jitsu practice. Mindfulness can be a practice in anything you do.
Don’t live as a spectator to your life. Live instead as a matador (minus the cruelty), weaving his dance between life and death but never once allowing himself to be anywhere but here, lest he find himself on the sharp end of carelessness. Because each moment we miss by living in the past or projecting the future is a tiny death that we don’t even notice. Life is meant to be lived.