Focusing/Sitting still

[Django]

Still is still moving to me
And I swim like a fish in the sea all the time
But if that’s what it takes to be free I don’t mind
Still is still moving to me
And it’s hard to explain how I feel
It won’t go in words but I know that it’s real
I can be moving or I can be still
But still is still moving me -Willie Nelson

I move around all the time. Seriously, ALL the time. When I read, I stop to muse or even think about another book entirely. When I’m supposed to sit still, I tend to fidget and, though it’s not as prominent as it was a few years ago, my mind wanders. When I’m deep in thought in my house (which is a lot), I pace around the house in a furious and unfocused manner. I have a hard time practicing my instrument a lot of the time; I’ll play for about 15 minutes and then just sit and get up and then hammer out some nonsense on the piano. I eat and drink at random intervals some days. I don’t just “sit around” a lot.

It’s been like this since I was a little kid. Naturally, the diagnosed my with ADD and prescribed me with Ritalin, then Adderall. I guess it worked, if by “worked”, they meant it kept me in waking sedate, or something. I no longer take it. I’m not the ever-moving kid I was when I was 10, but I’m still like that a lot.

It causes me a lot of discomfort. The thing is, I’m trying to figure out WHY.

Thom Hartmann hypothesizes that kids diagnosed with ADD are “hunters in a world being taken over by farmers”. This isn’t that crazy; the pediatrician told my parents, instead of the old-time “You’re stupid kid doesn’t pay attention” that, contrary to not paying attention, I pay attention to EVERYTHING. Hartmann thinks that kids with this kind of attention deficit are more adept to the multi-sensual world of a hunter-gatherer than a “worker bee” atmosphere.

I should be happy about this, right?

But I’m not IN a hunter-gatherer world; I’m in civilization. It sucks to not be able to focus, a lot. I’d rather not go back to drugs, lest I lose this so-theorized “relic” of undomesticated life. But I can’t even enjoy universally human things sometimes: the slow taste of good food, the intricacies of a story, etc. Every account of rewilding I’ve read had a lot to do with this thing called “patience”. A bow-drill fire’s gonna take a while, a tanned hide’s gonna take a while, finding good berries is going to take a while, ad infinitum. I can’t grasp patience too many times. I can’t decide which part of me still wants to live in a multi-sensual world and which part of me has been warped by modern societies “instant gratification” mechanism.

[yarrow_dreamer]

I have a certain antsy restlessness, much like you describe, that comes and goes. It kept me up most of the night last night.

It also makes “productive use of my time” a la this culture’s values, difficult to impossible.

I’ve gone through many theories as to where this feeling comes from and what to do about it (if anything). I think it has many sources.

I sometimes observe myself rushing through a momentary task or experience for no good reason. A friend said I’ve just gotten really good at matching myself to the surrounding pace.

I think, too, we expect ourselves to keep an insane amount of truly insignificant information in our heads, buzzing at the ready, so we stay on top of the schedules and tasks built into our modern city lives. No wonder we have such scattered energy! And I think many who adapt well to that suffer a very dear price for it.

Ultimately, though, I feel like my acculturation to our civilized culture trained me to focus on tasks and get through them. Worker bee brain. Turning off awareness, turning off mind and questions and senses and feelings and just plowing through, fast.

I hear your struggle, Django.

[timeLESS]

Ha! we reflect eachother. I also never cease to move shift pluck bang grind toss and drum my way around. I also eat information as if it were the finest of meats.

But to sit still. its soo hard. so intense and difficult to see me. To enjoy my company in silence. To reflect, breathe in and out. To forget to think for some moments. Not like that civilised crap of learning to ignore our impulses and desires but to listen to them and what they tell us. The silence does speak harshly though and be prepared to deal with your emotions.

Good luck with that

[E11]

Among my learing this approaching page quote from author Daniel Quinn and from Quinn’s book titled BEYOND CIVILIZATION: Humanities Next Great Adventure has with me improved my stillness that I presently come to call snail, tree, and at times stag.

“When the underclass becomes restless
Our history is full of underclass insurrections, revolts, rebellions, riots, and revolutions, but not a single one has ever ended with people just walking away. This is because our citizens know that civilization must continue at any cost and not be abandoned under any circumstance. So they will got berserk, will destroy everything in sight, will slaughter all the elite they can get their hands on, will burn, rape, and pillage–but they will never just walk away.

This is why the behavior of the Maya, the Olmec, and the rest is so unfathomable mysterious to our historians. For them, it seems self-evident that civilization must continue at any cost and never be abandoned under any circumstance. How, then, and never be abandoned under any circumstance. How, then, could the Maya, the Olmec, and the others not have know it.

But this is exactly what was missing in the minds of these peoples. When they no longer liked what they were building, they were able to walk away from it, because they didn’t have the idea that it must continue at any cost and not be abandoned under any circumstance.

This meme makes the same difference between the and us as the parachute makes between the two guys falling from the place or the body armor makes between the two guys facing the gunman.”

BC

Ok, I just copied that which gave me tremendous fun typing every words and reading very closely.

More than a thousand people and myself have learned a bunch from this book. I learned a perception more and improved my own perception more too. Thanks again, Quinn! And thanks for sharing your stories, Django, Yarrow Dreamer, Timeless. Furthermore, this book started familiarizing me with that word ‘meme’ that, Richard Dawkin’s, founded and entered to Dawkin’s book The Selfish Gene that covers a bunch more relevant stuf. Prior to reading this book and other Quinn books I had zilch to respond to “restlessness” and minute amounts to respond to sitting still/focusing ways. This book gave me a perception, definitions, tools, new ideas, and more utilizable entities I presently give to my crafty tool bundle that I bring everywhere with me at all times. I never gave civilizations that possible had people who moved away from their full-time farming living ways and hierarchical relationships to all and each other a thought. I had zilch to respond to “our history” expressions, I thought I knew what “our history” meant at all times. More preciously and precisely this book gave me a new perception, Daniel Quinn’s perceptions mostly, and supports me with renewing my thoughts and improving my facilitation to people that crave stopping and starting simultaneously, both at once, and ways away from civilization thrusting unkind forces; since all always moves anyway, remember, therefore who has powers, if any, to stop with stillness, to stop all completely, and possibly even stop reality? Well, I think we do have such powers to stop certain habits and crafts we’ve crafted and live with presently.