About Time, Session 5: Not Minding This Moment

Notice how your minding takes you out of the present, making you ineffective and unhappy.

The belief that our current desire for distraction is a new phenomenon caused by technology is a common misconception. Through our study of Marcus and Seneca, we have seen that it is a tale as old as time. Technology has just made us more efficient in enabling our desire for distractions.

My son brought to my attention last week a passage from Thoreau’s Walden:

Hardly a man takes a half-hour’s nap after dinner, but when he wakes he holds up his head and asks, ‘What’s the news?’ as if the rest of mankind had stood his sentinel… After a night’s sleep the news has become as indispensable as the breakfast.

Thoreau’s “typical” man was “modern” enough to long for breaking news: “Pray tell me anything new that has happened to a man anywhere on this globe.”

Are you longing for something to distract you from the present moment?

Burkeman quotes Greg Krech from his book The Art of Taking Action, who observed “that, more often than not, I do not feel like doing most of the things that need doing. I’m not just speaking about cleaning the toilet bowl or doing my tax returns. I’m referring to those things I genuinely desire to accomplish.”