Awareness

Awareness and Courage AWARENESS If you are going to consistently make good choices in your life you have to be aware of what is going on inside and outside of you. You also have to have the courage to stand up for yourself, for others, and for principles you think are important. Courage will be discussed in the next article. Awareness is one of the most critical elements of living. The philosopher George Gurdjieff said that you can’t get out of prison if you don’t know you’re in it. In other words you can’t change it if you don’t see it. Many of us walk around as if we’re in a coma. We are unaware of what is going on, or our impact on other people, or what is impacting us. If you read at all - psychology, philosophy, religious works, Eastern, Western - you will see the word awareness or some variation of it. It might be attentiveness, or focus or paying attention, mindfulness, or words that are similar. All great teachers have emphasized the importance of awareness. Awareness means opening your mind, opening your ears and all your senses. It means being open. Awareness doesn’t mean agreeing with or liking everything. So many people don’t appreciate what they have until it is gone. That is a failing of awareness. If you’re constantly going a thousand miles an hour in your life it is very hard to be aware of your surroundings and the people that make it up. Slow down. Take some breaks. Awareness is partly a matter of priorities. If we see things as not very important we will not pay much attention to them. Every day we make choices like that - probably hundreds of choices like that. Not everything has the same “weight” in importance. If I am having lunch with you what you have to say is probably going to be more important than what the person three tables away is saying to his luncheon partner. The interesting thing about our technological advances is that priorities are very strange now. It seems more important to talk to someone on the phone than to the person with us, to check messages than listen to a friend, to text someone instead of paying attention to driving our car. As we have often seen, getting your awareness priorities messed up in some of those scenarios can get you killed. And even if you don’t die that losing of our awareness definitely damages our relationships and our “present.” More and more of us are becoming “ADD-like” in our lives. We might not have a formal diagnosis as such but we are similar. We can’t focus. We can’t pay attention. Every few seconds we’re on to something else. Lack of awareness is an ADD type of problem. It makes for very superficial relationships and interactions with the world around us. Drugs help reduce our awareness dramatically. And drug usage is still going strong. It’s not just illegal drugs or alcohol, but prescription drugs as well. They’re big business. There are obviously a lot of bad outcomes with drug abuse but perhaps one of the worst is the reduction of the awareness in our lives. When you hear the phrase, “He’s out of it,” that is an awareness statement. It often relates to drugs but if someone is playing a video game for hours on end the statement would apply also. They’re out of life. They’re out of sync. Oh the person playing the video game might be totally focused on the nuances of the game but he or she is still out of it as it relates to life. Tunnel vision takes over and isolates the person. You hear a lot more of, “Huh?” “What?” said in a groggy tone as someone tries to pull them back to the world. Listening is a fallen away skill for many people. People don’t listen well at all. And that is an awareness issue. As I said earlier they might be distracted by their toys or by being busy or by being numb or drugged up. We’ve all had moments where we have drifted away from a conversation and then someone asked, “What do you think?” We’re then scrambling trying to not look like a fool. But I’m not talking about once in a while. I’m talking about a consistent pattern. Parents are often terrible at listening to their kids or really paying attention to what is happening. I used to go around and do a talk on substance abuse telling parents the warning signs to look for that their kids might be getting into drugs or alcohol (which is a drug.) Eventually I thought that this was really a stupid talk. The premise was stupid. Why, I asked myself, am I having to tell parents that if their kids were hanging around with Susie and Johnny and now they’re hanging with “The Hit Man,” and “ Death Zombie” or that they had been getting good grades and now they’re flunking or that they were wearing regular clothes and taking care of themselves and now they’re wearing spikes up and down their arms and have tattoos hidden around their body their might be something going on? Weren’t they paying attention??? Are parents that clueless? I know. Those things don’t always mean drugs but come on. Pay attention. Something is happening. The sad thing is that many times the parents weren’t really paying that much attention. When we’re not aware we miss the subtle beauties of life. We miss the pain in a friend. We miss our relationship with life. When you’re not aware you can’t be impacted in a meaningful way. If you’re not impacted you’re not touched. If you’re not touched you eventually become barren. Relationships become superficial and ultimately meaningless. Everyone is chilling out from. . . I’m not sure what. A lot of people are busy doing things they don’t even like. Most people are waiting to retire. Ask somebody how their job is going and don’t be surprised to hear, “ Six years, five months, two weeks, one day and three hours.” People know just how long they have to go until they retire. And what will they do when they retire? A lot of people will just keep the lack of awareness going. Carlos Castaneda said that for a lot of people life is like a hot, sunday afternoon. Not altogether miserable but rather dull and uncomfortable. And then it’s over. In essence they died unaware of what they had missed except in some vague uncomfortable way. Perhaps the most critical element of awareness is being aware that my day is my day. No matter what is going on I still have something to say about the quality of the day. I still can bring meaning and joy to it even if misery abounds. Anne Frank showed how a young person could still recognize beauty in the midst of terror and ugliness. It is critical that young people appreciate the importance of awareness. They have to see that it is more than a reprimand, “Sit up straight and pay attention.” They need adult models that value awareness, people that care about seeing, listening, touching and appreciating.