My habit, after my work-out, has been one ounce of dark chocolate, which I have found a better motivator than a carrot on a stick, followed by a five-minute meditation. When the weather is good, I eat my chocolate and do my sit outside, beside the health club pool. Swimmers move through the blue, salted water. Tall palm trees sway. Recently, though, jack hammers have been blasting, not 20-feet away.
I have never been a great meditator. (That I persist, after all these years of practice, in grading my meditations, confirms my long way to go.) And the jack hammers drove me inside. Then the weather got even better.
It turned out jack hammers were not determinative. I could not tune them out. But they did not prevent my having the old familiar thoughts which keep me – or don’t – from following my breath. They did not unplug the light show, flashing yellow, red and green on the inside of my eye lids. They were just another noise.
All around us wars and plagues blast. But we can keep on doing what we do.
So many Bob Levins on the Internet; I'm the Bob Levin who writes.