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mattwdelong 1 days ago [-]
About a year and a half ago, I cleared and rough graded my land for our house build. I rented a kx40-4 for about two weeks and put about 140 hours on it. That was pure meditation. The hydraulics became an extension of my body, with the immediate gratification of instantaneous change, I was able to shape the land as I see fit. My wife asked me what I was thinking about and my response was “dirt dirt dirt..rock..dirt” and that was wonderful. I have not had that feeling since I was completely disconnected for a week on an island in Belize. Very calming until the tap root of a big oak tree wrapped around the bedrock 6’ underground. Then you’re reminded that every task has its challenges. I’m now on the look out for a good deal on an excavator.
Otherwise, I enjoy flower farming and grow about 1/2 acre of flowers and sell wholesale. Close second. Sometimes it is stressful in the midst of July/August weeds but then once you come out the other side, it’s all worth it.
chung8123 1 days ago [-]
I have always dreamed about operating an excavator and learning to do so well. I am not sure if it was a midlife crisis or what but I ended up buying a Chinese 2 ton excavator. I live in the suburbs but when I just want to clear my head I go in the backyard and play around with it. My skills have improved a little but nothing like putting 140 hours on a project good. The one I got was about the same as a U17 but less than half the price.
criddell 1 days ago [-]
There are places in (or around) Las Vegas where you can operate heavy equipment in a playground setting. You can dig holes or smash cars or just push dirt around. I'm thinking about spending an afternoon there next time I go.
fragmede 5 hours ago [-]
Dig This Las Vegas! Charged me $750 to smash up a car. Tons of fun!
HeyLaughingBoy 23 hours ago [-]
So the TikTok memes about an "emotional support excavator" are real!
fragmede 5 hours ago [-]
> I ended up buying a Chinese 2 ton excavator. I live in the suburbs but when I just want to clear my head I go in the backyard and play around with it.
That's easily the most awesome thing I've read on the Internet today!
...how do your neighbors feel about it?
jareklupinski 22 hours ago [-]
> “dirt dirt dirt..rock..dirt” and that was wonderful
reminds me of discovering minecraft for the first time a long time ago
steveBK123 1 days ago [-]
> completely disconnected for a week on an island in Belize
I used to enjoy 18 hour flights to Asia pre-WiFi for true disconnection, plus time zone difference to US East Coast made the time spent on the ground there feel at least half disconnected
tonyedgecombe 1 days ago [-]
I just go for a walk in the woods.
tharkun__ 22 hours ago [-]
See I can totally understand the excavator story. Would love that too.
Picking currants? I dread that every year. Same with the raspberries and the cherries and ... It's a chore, I really don't like it at all. Especially having to make sure there's no little green stem left on the currants. That work drives me nuts. Only thing worse is puzzles.
xattt 22 hours ago [-]
I don’t know if this is established technique, but I’ve settled on taking a pair of scissors to the base of the berry bunch and letting it drop into a bowl. I pick the stems off after the fact.
marssaxman 21 hours ago [-]
Motorcycling gets like that for me, flying down a wide-open highway out in the countryside on a clear day... The bike ceases to be a machine I am operating and becomes an extension of my self, my mind immersed in the experience, full of the shape of the land and the curves of the road and the wind and the light.
agumonkey 1 days ago [-]
I believe ability to shape our immediate surrounding is deeply placed in our brains.
QuercusMax 22 hours ago [-]
Not really much different than many of our close mammalian relatives, like beavers (rodents and primates are very closely related).
The more interesting thing is the use of "exoskeleton" type tools like excavators , automobiles, or even things like forks. Our brains basically consider them an extension of our body once we learn to use them. Fascinating stuff!
agumonkey 2 hours ago [-]
Agreed. And yeah it makes the brain confident it can shape its environment, which must be a very old need in mammals indeed.
nonewideas 24 hours ago [-]
[dead]
steveBK123 1 days ago [-]
I get it, same reason I enjoy gardening alone in general.
Most of us spend our work time balancing 100 different things, putting out fires, bouncing between meetings, answering adhoc pings via calls/zooms/slacks, and struggling to do the deep work we are allegedly paid for in between.
There's a therapeutic aspect to certain kinds of physical hobby/chore work or full focussed hobbyist time that counterbalances this.
Otherwise at the end of a day of being burned out, we ruminate & doom scroll which only makes things worse.
unimplmntd_trap 1 days ago [-]
It’s amazing what 5 minutes spent picking weeds out of my garden does for my mental health.
Noaidi 1 days ago [-]
You know what, that’s pretty depressing.
contagiousflow 23 hours ago [-]
Why?
Noaidi 22 hours ago [-]
Weeding is the act of removing unwanted plants, known as weeds, from a garden or other area where they are not desired. Capitalism "weeds" out the people that are marked for inefficiency.
I see this mimicking of capitalism as a depressing attempt to be in control. A re-expression of the power dynamic.
This is just my opinion.
embedding-shape 22 hours ago [-]
"Tending", which is the act of removing undesirable parts of whatever, isn't a parallel to how capitalism favors a winner-takes-it-all scenarios, if that's what you're alluding to.
If you're growing edible stuff, you need to remove the weed in many parts of the world otherwise you won't have any vegetables eventually as the weeds will overgrow everything else. You also don't want something you cannot eat to take nutrients and sun from what you can eat.
Noaidi 21 hours ago [-]
You also don't want [someone who] cannot [work fast enough] to take [efficiency] from [the assembly line].
embedding-shape 20 hours ago [-]
Not every company works like that. But every gardener removes weeds from their edible stuff.
nemo 14 hours ago [-]
Gardening and horticulture are ancient human activities that are incredibly old, the act of tending to and cultivating one's garden is a really delightful way to center the mind and get into a place where one is more grounded, connected to nature, and about as disconnected from capitalist interests a thing as you'll find. It's humanizing.
Just because the suits took a metaphor from gardening doesn't mean you have to think like the suits, maybe you want to liberate yourself from the kind of dehumanizing thinking where capitalism rather than nature is the central frame of reference.
theodric 17 hours ago [-]
You also cull weak animals for the good of the flock/herd, to avoid dysgenic traits from them being passed down. You also clean your house. You also peel and trim a potato before cooking it.
stantaylor 1 days ago [-]
I do long distance solo road cycling. The riding takes just enough of my cognitive capacity that the rest of my mind wanders lightly, usually not thinking about anything of substance. It feels like meditation to me.
1 days ago [-]
embedding-shape 22 hours ago [-]
Similarly, in the summer I do long open sea swims, and the calm is incredible when it's just you and nature, nothing else. Your mind is guided to focus at the task at hand and lets you wander around just a bit. The post-activity decompression is also real nice afterglow to complete the experience.
newsclues 1 days ago [-]
Yes, if you’re on a car free path, even better!
DC-3 1 days ago [-]
For a confident road cyclist it is usually a better experience to be on an actual road than a cycle path even though you have to manage vehicular traffic.
mantas 1 days ago [-]
Eh. Not the op, but calm backroads are perfect for such rides. Good enough surface so no need to scan it for the better line as on gravel roads or offroad. Little traffic. And cars are much more predictable than the chaos of bike paths.
xattt 22 hours ago [-]
The missing part in a lot of this is the deliberate silence. Sure, I enjoy catching up with podcasts, but it’s hard to fully settle in and hear your own thoughts if there is other audio on the go.
ingvay7 1 days ago [-]
Have much more respect for "yard work" after realizing how therapeutic it is.Hours in the sun doing heavy work after sitting at a desk all week is incredibly relaxing and something i look forward to.
Tade0 1 days ago [-]
I'm currently on a week-long vacation and it's been so long since I had some proper time off that I forgot how slowly time flows when you're not under pressure.
MotoriX 2 hours ago [-]
My kind of meditation and escapism is going mushroom hunting in the woods. I like the contrasts in life, and realizing that outside the city, life is just getting started. It works like a reset for my brain. Maybe one day I’ll even buy a little place out in the countryside, but for now, my rational side won’t let me do it...
gcanyon 1 days ago [-]
Seattle has wild (foreign, invasive) blackberries all over the place, and in Summer you can easily drive around a bit, spot them, and then spend twenty minutes picking and eating them. As someone from southern California, it's a marvelous thing for food to just be out there in the wild for the taking.
a_t48 13 hours ago [-]
I grew up in a valley half an hour south of Seattle that at one point was farmland. It was hard to find anything that didn't like the soil, so of course blackberries loved it. The entire back fence of the half acre or so lot was covered in blackberries that we'd have to hack back every year. As a result, we had some of the biggest best tasting blackberries I've ever had. Unfortunately, I wince every time I see a little tiny thing of blackberries at the farmers market for $7. I know there's economic reasons for it to be this way, but it sucks paying money for something I know grows out of the ground for free somewhere else.
VladVladikoff 1 days ago [-]
I used to live in the PNW and picking blackberries, mushrooms, cherry plums & oysters kept me quite busy for most of the year. Where I live now the mushrooms and wild berries are nowhere near as abundant, and I feel quite depressed, I’m also spending a lot less time walking (hiking) than I did before. I should probably move back to the PNW for my health.
criddell 1 days ago [-]
I lived in Portland for a while and had blackberries along the side of my street. I asked my neighbors about them and they warned me not to eat them because they are basically watered by street runoff.
artisinal 1 days ago [-]
> for food to just be out there in the wild for the taking
Wait until you hear about hunting!
Alien1Being 1 days ago [-]
Yuck ....
Way to ruin something good .
margalabargala 1 days ago [-]
Don't be an ass.
Not everyone shares your opinion that what needs to be done for you to eat meat, is fine only so long as you can pay someone else to do it for you.
Alien1Being 17 hours ago [-]
So in a post about fine wine or perfume, I should put a comment about faeces and vomit?
Commenting about slaughtering animals for entertainment in a thread about picking berries is crass to the point of revulsion.
BenjiWiebe 14 hours ago [-]
Actually they literally quoted the 'food' bit. There's actually people who hunt for food, and enjoy it also.
You can fish for sport, or for food, or you can have fun/sport fishing for food.
margalabargala 14 hours ago [-]
Well, wine is a beverage and feces and vomit are not, so no, that wouldn't be appropriate. There are certainly conversations where discussing perfume, feces, and vomit in the same sentence would be reasonable.
The thread wasn't about picking berries, it was about harvesting food from nature:
> it's a marvelous thing for food to just be out there in the wild for the taking.
Your personal insecurities and hangups about exposure to where your food comes from doesn't make shooting, cleaning, and eating a deer irrelevant. There's a reason grocery stores exist, it's so that.people like you don't need to think about cleaning meat, but that doesn't mean others can't discuss it.
If this bothers you so much, you might enjoy spending time instead on facebook or reddit, where you can easily ensure you are not exposed to concepts you personally find revolting.
mannanj 1 days ago [-]
This post engages with bad faith and violates the hacker news rules.
Noaidi 1 days ago [-]
You seem pretty disconnected from nature.
epihelix 1 days ago [-]
Ah yes, the relaxing, meditative joy of killing things in cold blood. Nothing brings you closer to nature than watching the fur and blood fly. Inner peace coming right up ...
criddell 1 days ago [-]
Part of that is right. Hunters, as a group, are closer to nature than most. Thanks to them, all kinds of conservation efforts have been started and maintained.
Ever wonder how Nixon was able to establish the EPA and sign into law the clean air act, the clean water act, the marine mammal protection act, the legacy of parks program, and the endangered species act when the green movement was (and is) mostly associated with left-leaning activists? Hunters. They were a big part of the conservative base and provided cover for Nixon and his conservation efforts.
strken 23 hours ago [-]
I don't mean to be a jerk about this, but if you ever find an owl pellet and pull it apart, you'll be able to see the exact number and species of small animals it ate the previous night.
Owls spit out roughly one pellet a day.
Meditating on what this means will bring you closer to nature, although one of the primary benefits of this closeness tends to be gratitude that we can engage with nature on our own terms.
Noaidi 22 hours ago [-]
You have just insulted generations of Matagi.
bikelang 1 days ago [-]
This really resonates with me. I think I have 2 kinds of meditations like this. 1 is more “centering” - fly fishing; and the other is more “processing” - gravel biking.
When I’m on a long, multi hour gravel bike ride - I usually don’t listen to music - just the sounds of world around me and let my mind freely wander. As my mind wanders it finds the tough emotional pieces I haven’t yet processed and starts chipping away at them. Sometimes I end up crying quite hard depending on what my mind has decided to work through. I’m sure I look like a maniac to whatever farmers I’m passing by.
Fly fishing on the other hand is less emotionally intense and much more calming. The dull roar of the river, the intense focus on the water - trying to spot the fish movements within it, trying to identify the tiny bug life around me so I can better select a fly, the focus on placing my fly and my line precisely where I want it. The rhythmic casting, mending, and recasting. Finding constant balance as you wade across uneven river beds. It’s a rare thing where I can fully silence my mind but it’s easy to do when fly fishing. It’s like a deep reprieve from the otherwise constant chatter of thinking - just calm and serene.
randusername 1 days ago [-]
I think it is underappreciated how you can make almost anything meditative, even things you previously did not like as mentioned in this article.
For me it's loading and unloading the dishwasher. I hated it, still do, but if I'm careful to approach it with a very delicate kind of focus I can lose myself in the deep mysteries of the task.
summarybot 24 hours ago [-]
I do really appreciate tranquil posts about immersing oneself in actual life, like this one. But as a long-term meditator I have a duty to inform everyone that doing something is not meditation.
antonyt 24 hours ago [-]
Is meditation so rigidly defined? It would seem to me that a certain kind of activity done with a certain kind of mindset could be deeply meditative. Disclaimer: I am not a meditator.
summarybot 23 hours ago [-]
Yes, classically the Point of meditation is to enter into absorption via gathering-poise [not a common term but one I have begun using as of late as a sense-for-sense translation of samadhi]. Unfabricated reality is not accessible through doing things.
jcgl 9 hours ago [-]
As far as I understand, there are numerous different kinds of meditation, even within just single traditions. Different kinds with different goals and techniques.
I’d be careful about talking about “the point” of meditation.
Cider9986 23 hours ago [-]
But you can meditate while doing something.
dudefeliciano 24 hours ago [-]
I never know what to respond to people when talking about meditation and they mention something like running/playing guitar/reading/etc is their meditation. I don't want to diminish their experience or sound like a contrarian but also know that
> doing something is not meditation.
so usually those conversations end with a "hm yes that's nice too"
brennanpeterson 21 hours ago [-]
So prayer beads aren't meditation? Indian traditionalists are out. Walking isn't, so zen is out. Chanting isn't, so.i guess all bhuddism is pretty much not ok. Maybe there is no true meditation.
It is ok to be focused and mindful with different aids. Always has been. There are self focused (mindful) and also self-abnegating traditions, and all count.
No harm to.me if others have a different way. If music, or chants, or gardening, have at it.
dudefeliciano 21 hours ago [-]
I am not saying that it's harmful I just find it hard to explain or relate my experience of sitting meditation, having only "internal aids" (the breath, the body, or thoughts themselves) rather than external aids or activities like running. I also know what the flow state feels like when doing sports, playing music, drawing, etc, but to me that experience is something very different than just sitting. That difference is what I find difficult to convey.
strken 23 hours ago [-]
There's this very annoying thing where meditation experts try to dumb it down until they're basically describing a state of not thinking about stuff, and then someone else goes "oh cool yeah I don't think about stuff when I run", and the experts immediately go "but not like that!"
I wish that meditation experts would either dumb things down better or not try at all.
EdwardDiego 8 hours ago [-]
Manual subsistence labour being your meditation is very much a luxury good.
Our ancestors picked berries to survive, we pick them for quiet time. It's damn good to live in the future.
maguay 1 days ago [-]
Washing dishes, strangely, hits that for me. One of the reasons I've never found dishwashers to be worth it.
tonyedgecombe 1 days ago [-]
We just got a dishwasher after forty years without and I’m not sure it was a good idea.
tartoran 23 hours ago [-]
I find washing dishes by hand meditative too. I also don't find dishwashers too appealing.
lubujackson 23 hours ago [-]
My family has taken up some hobbies like this, which are very therapeutic to do together. Berry/cherry picking, hiking, mushroom gathering, and on vacation we like to go to certain beaches in Oregon to find agates or other cool rocks, some places have seashells and even a beach in Florida that has shark teeth.
With small kids, these sort of lazy tasks bring out focus, physical awareness and exploration. Living in the city, these are valuable respites from chaos and noise.
Havoc 1 days ago [-]
For me its walking.
Life seems a bit better after a long walk preferably somewhere nice
wtk 1 days ago [-]
Walking in cities is often doable on 'autopilot' which annoyingly makes room for my overthinking. Walking in the hills is what probably works better for me as the attention needs to be on the pebbles, stones, holes, path forks.
chanux 1 days ago [-]
For me it's sweeping the garden.
I hated having to do this a s a child. When I returned home after being away for quite a while, I picked up just to reduce mom's burden.
Then I found myself actually wanting to do it, just for the mental space it gives. The sense of cleanliness you get adds to the quality of the experience.
the_sleaze_ 1 days ago [-]
I find the more and the better I can optimize a routine the more gratification it gives me. Mowing the ideal path through the yard, sweeping the kitchen east to west against the far wall so no crumbs escape under the cabinet and no strokes are duplicated.
Same feeling as well a well optimized hot path.
suslik 1 days ago [-]
Very nice post. I wish life didn't ruin this for me. As a child, I was forced to pick berries and mushrooms alone when all my friends were playing football - and it made me hate the process with all my heart. But that was so long ago - maybe I should give it one more chance...
wtk 1 days ago [-]
If in the process you realize it still triggers you, maybe lessons from dr. Gabor Maté are useful. He teaches that emotional triggers are valuable teachers because they highlight unresolved past trauma.
catigula 1 days ago [-]
Sometimes when I push my finger on an old scar, it hurts. I don't expect it to get much better.
denis-stable 1 days ago [-]
I also hated picking berries as a child because it was so boring. Nowadays, with so much stress in my life I wouldn't mind spending a day picking berries as it seems pretty relaxing.
I love picking blackberries, sloes, elderberries, elderflowers, crab apples etc from the hedgerows around me in the south of England. I also love then using them to make preserves etc. Very relaxing and rewarding.
ge96 22 hours ago [-]
Here I was thinking these are poisonous ha, let's try it
olek1983 19 hours ago [-]
I hate picking berries. It's either too hot, or too cold, or too humid. Maybe I will convince myself some day; who knows?
But I entirely understand the idea and support that.
In my experience, there are two approaches:
1. Freestyle: I try not to steer anything; just the mind is flowing.
2. Focusing on here and now: I try to focus on the present moment.
Here are my ideas:
1. Wandering in the woods/park without the phone and counting backwards from 50 to 1 over and over again, or focusing on the present experience (noticing people, nature, and other stuff without judgements, just the observation).
2. The same as above but with the phone + recording voice memos. Sometimes, it's over 30 minutes long voice memos :-) Saying things out loud have more power than just thinking about that. It makes that happen, real and physical.
3. Swimming in the pool, counting strokes, breaths, pools swum, etc.
abstractspoon 6 days ago [-]
Shelling peas has a similar quality
Guestmodinfo 1 days ago [-]
Polishing my shoes is mine
1 days ago [-]
ginko 1 days ago [-]
Hm, picking redcurrants usually isn't so much work because you collect entire strigs of berries. It's picking the berries off the strigs later that's more annoying but you can do it while watching tv or something.
LemonLama 6 days ago [-]
LOve it
Noaidi 1 days ago [-]
I’m sorry, I can’t stand that these types of posts keep making it to the front page of hacker news.
It’s been said over and over but they never reveal the deepest truth. We should all be picking berries all the time but we can’t because capitalism steals our time and wealth and makes us suffer.
I mean, can you deny that’s what he’s saying here? “I find it more pleasurable picking berries than writing code or working in a coffee shop or yada yada yada?”
phil21 22 hours ago [-]
Being able to pick berries is fun and relaxing!
Having to pick berries is not.
I have done both throughout my life. I can assure you very few engineers would prefer to be out in a field in the sun or rain working 16 hour days in harvest season to get the berries in before they rot.
And that goes as much for wild berry picking for sustenance, sustenance farming, homesteading, or commercial farming.
I love my little garden. It’s zen for me to be out there trimming, doing soil amendments, picking fruit, etc. I also worked on my parents 2 acre garden that sustained the household (and later sold at market). I highly prefer my easy white collar job to that.
So yeah, I do deny what he’s saying there. I enjoyed programming for fun way more than gardening for survival. Just like I enjoy gardening for fun way more than engineering for survival. The latter scenario is preferable to the former for the vast majority of people.
mlyle 1 days ago [-]
> We should all be picking berries all the time
I don't think that he wants to pick berries all the time. Or be without his family all the time (even though he prefers being on his own with the berries).
I envy the guy. I wouldn't want to pick berries all the time. But having a routine source of release and tuning out like that which happens to commune with nature and use one's hands...
I was building workbenches for my students last week. A lot of the time was spent outside breaking down pallets and staging things. It was too hot, but I saw the trees sway, the few puffy clouds move, the lizards dart through my path, the squirrels squabble. The few times the wind suddenly picked up felt like heaven. My body ached in new ways. My fingers got into a rhythm and I watched them do things.
I could easily get a job doing work like that. No! I want to be with my students, and I want to work on my hard cerebral projects. But there is a joy to being in nature and to do things with your hands, and there is a rhythm to doing time consuming work, and when we make time for it, it feels really good in a primal way.
Noaidi 22 hours ago [-]
> I don't think that he wants to pick berries all the time.
I was using that as a metaphor. Meaning, we should be living a life where there is no manufactured societal stress we need to escape.
mlyle 20 hours ago [-]
> Meaning, we should be living a life where there is no manufactured societal stress we need to escape.
I don't think that at all. I think struggle and making stuff better and working hard and feeling ourselves grow is great.
And I wish I had something routine like his picking of berries, because sometimes just feeling existence and our place in it... feels really good. I'm envious of the people who find a routine that does this well for them, while I mostly find it by happenstance.
And I think you do better at the other stuff when you go pick berries.
wffurr 1 days ago [-]
I think a reminder to periodically log out and go engage in some repetitive task and actually find peace and enjoyment in it is probably a good thing for a lot of folks.
kylemaxwell 1 days ago [-]
He says he finds it more pleasurable, not that we should be doing it all the time. And he definitely doesn't say anything about capitalism. There are lots of things that are pleasurable but we can't do all the time, and there are lots of things we need to do but aren't pleasurable. Both exist.
Otherwise, I enjoy flower farming and grow about 1/2 acre of flowers and sell wholesale. Close second. Sometimes it is stressful in the midst of July/August weeds but then once you come out the other side, it’s all worth it.
That's easily the most awesome thing I've read on the Internet today!
...how do your neighbors feel about it?
reminds me of discovering minecraft for the first time a long time ago
I used to enjoy 18 hour flights to Asia pre-WiFi for true disconnection, plus time zone difference to US East Coast made the time spent on the ground there feel at least half disconnected
Picking currants? I dread that every year. Same with the raspberries and the cherries and ... It's a chore, I really don't like it at all. Especially having to make sure there's no little green stem left on the currants. That work drives me nuts. Only thing worse is puzzles.
The more interesting thing is the use of "exoskeleton" type tools like excavators , automobiles, or even things like forks. Our brains basically consider them an extension of our body once we learn to use them. Fascinating stuff!
Most of us spend our work time balancing 100 different things, putting out fires, bouncing between meetings, answering adhoc pings via calls/zooms/slacks, and struggling to do the deep work we are allegedly paid for in between.
There's a therapeutic aspect to certain kinds of physical hobby/chore work or full focussed hobbyist time that counterbalances this.
Otherwise at the end of a day of being burned out, we ruminate & doom scroll which only makes things worse.
I see this mimicking of capitalism as a depressing attempt to be in control. A re-expression of the power dynamic.
This is just my opinion.
If you're growing edible stuff, you need to remove the weed in many parts of the world otherwise you won't have any vegetables eventually as the weeds will overgrow everything else. You also don't want something you cannot eat to take nutrients and sun from what you can eat.
Just because the suits took a metaphor from gardening doesn't mean you have to think like the suits, maybe you want to liberate yourself from the kind of dehumanizing thinking where capitalism rather than nature is the central frame of reference.
Wait until you hear about hunting!
Way to ruin something good .
Not everyone shares your opinion that what needs to be done for you to eat meat, is fine only so long as you can pay someone else to do it for you.
Commenting about slaughtering animals for entertainment in a thread about picking berries is crass to the point of revulsion.
You can fish for sport, or for food, or you can have fun/sport fishing for food.
The thread wasn't about picking berries, it was about harvesting food from nature:
> it's a marvelous thing for food to just be out there in the wild for the taking.
Your personal insecurities and hangups about exposure to where your food comes from doesn't make shooting, cleaning, and eating a deer irrelevant. There's a reason grocery stores exist, it's so that.people like you don't need to think about cleaning meat, but that doesn't mean others can't discuss it.
If this bothers you so much, you might enjoy spending time instead on facebook or reddit, where you can easily ensure you are not exposed to concepts you personally find revolting.
Ever wonder how Nixon was able to establish the EPA and sign into law the clean air act, the clean water act, the marine mammal protection act, the legacy of parks program, and the endangered species act when the green movement was (and is) mostly associated with left-leaning activists? Hunters. They were a big part of the conservative base and provided cover for Nixon and his conservation efforts.
Owls spit out roughly one pellet a day.
Meditating on what this means will bring you closer to nature, although one of the primary benefits of this closeness tends to be gratitude that we can engage with nature on our own terms.
When I’m on a long, multi hour gravel bike ride - I usually don’t listen to music - just the sounds of world around me and let my mind freely wander. As my mind wanders it finds the tough emotional pieces I haven’t yet processed and starts chipping away at them. Sometimes I end up crying quite hard depending on what my mind has decided to work through. I’m sure I look like a maniac to whatever farmers I’m passing by.
Fly fishing on the other hand is less emotionally intense and much more calming. The dull roar of the river, the intense focus on the water - trying to spot the fish movements within it, trying to identify the tiny bug life around me so I can better select a fly, the focus on placing my fly and my line precisely where I want it. The rhythmic casting, mending, and recasting. Finding constant balance as you wade across uneven river beds. It’s a rare thing where I can fully silence my mind but it’s easy to do when fly fishing. It’s like a deep reprieve from the otherwise constant chatter of thinking - just calm and serene.
For me it's loading and unloading the dishwasher. I hated it, still do, but if I'm careful to approach it with a very delicate kind of focus I can lose myself in the deep mysteries of the task.
I’d be careful about talking about “the point” of meditation.
> doing something is not meditation.
so usually those conversations end with a "hm yes that's nice too"
It is ok to be focused and mindful with different aids. Always has been. There are self focused (mindful) and also self-abnegating traditions, and all count.
No harm to.me if others have a different way. If music, or chants, or gardening, have at it.
I wish that meditation experts would either dumb things down better or not try at all.
Our ancestors picked berries to survive, we pick them for quiet time. It's damn good to live in the future.
With small kids, these sort of lazy tasks bring out focus, physical awareness and exploration. Living in the city, these are valuable respites from chaos and noise.
Life seems a bit better after a long walk preferably somewhere nice
I hated having to do this a s a child. When I returned home after being away for quite a while, I picked up just to reduce mom's burden.
Then I found myself actually wanting to do it, just for the mental space it gives. The sense of cleanliness you get adds to the quality of the experience.
Same feeling as well a well optimized hot path.
But I entirely understand the idea and support that.
In my experience, there are two approaches:
1. Freestyle: I try not to steer anything; just the mind is flowing.
2. Focusing on here and now: I try to focus on the present moment.
Here are my ideas:
1. Wandering in the woods/park without the phone and counting backwards from 50 to 1 over and over again, or focusing on the present experience (noticing people, nature, and other stuff without judgements, just the observation).
2. The same as above but with the phone + recording voice memos. Sometimes, it's over 30 minutes long voice memos :-) Saying things out loud have more power than just thinking about that. It makes that happen, real and physical.
3. Swimming in the pool, counting strokes, breaths, pools swum, etc.
It’s been said over and over but they never reveal the deepest truth. We should all be picking berries all the time but we can’t because capitalism steals our time and wealth and makes us suffer.
I mean, can you deny that’s what he’s saying here? “I find it more pleasurable picking berries than writing code or working in a coffee shop or yada yada yada?”
Having to pick berries is not.
I have done both throughout my life. I can assure you very few engineers would prefer to be out in a field in the sun or rain working 16 hour days in harvest season to get the berries in before they rot.
And that goes as much for wild berry picking for sustenance, sustenance farming, homesteading, or commercial farming.
I love my little garden. It’s zen for me to be out there trimming, doing soil amendments, picking fruit, etc. I also worked on my parents 2 acre garden that sustained the household (and later sold at market). I highly prefer my easy white collar job to that.
So yeah, I do deny what he’s saying there. I enjoyed programming for fun way more than gardening for survival. Just like I enjoy gardening for fun way more than engineering for survival. The latter scenario is preferable to the former for the vast majority of people.
I don't think that he wants to pick berries all the time. Or be without his family all the time (even though he prefers being on his own with the berries).
I envy the guy. I wouldn't want to pick berries all the time. But having a routine source of release and tuning out like that which happens to commune with nature and use one's hands...
I was building workbenches for my students last week. A lot of the time was spent outside breaking down pallets and staging things. It was too hot, but I saw the trees sway, the few puffy clouds move, the lizards dart through my path, the squirrels squabble. The few times the wind suddenly picked up felt like heaven. My body ached in new ways. My fingers got into a rhythm and I watched them do things.
I could easily get a job doing work like that. No! I want to be with my students, and I want to work on my hard cerebral projects. But there is a joy to being in nature and to do things with your hands, and there is a rhythm to doing time consuming work, and when we make time for it, it feels really good in a primal way.
I was using that as a metaphor. Meaning, we should be living a life where there is no manufactured societal stress we need to escape.
I don't think that at all. I think struggle and making stuff better and working hard and feeling ourselves grow is great.
And I wish I had something routine like his picking of berries, because sometimes just feeling existence and our place in it... feels really good. I'm envious of the people who find a routine that does this well for them, while I mostly find it by happenstance.
And I think you do better at the other stuff when you go pick berries.
https://xkcd.com/1053/