Stuck on Mindfulness
Yesterday, on my way up to park the house at one of my favorite escapes, I had a moment in the car that I have had dozens of times before. A moment in the mountains that I have shared with and attempted to explain to friends and family alike with little success. This moment was Silent Rock.
Silent Rock is a sharp curve through a jagged cut in the mountains side. My first time up the canyon I was told by my roommate and lifetime long resident of Utah, that there is no talking, no music, no noise to be made whilst driving past Silent Rock. “It’s a chance to be thankful to the mountain” he said. Followed by something about a curse if you broke the silence or some hoopla like that. I have adhered to this principle of the mountain religiously regardless of vehicle. I have forced it upon friends and failed to explain just what makes this practice so special.
This is a perfect example of being mindful of the moment. A mini meditation as you traverse through majesty. You tune out all exterior noise, and tune in your thoughts to that present moment on the mountain. It takes about ten seconds, and through years of practice, it has brought many moments of joy to my life without even realizing why I was doing it.
When I was going through that curve yesterday, I realized the purpose and the reasoning behind the silence. To give thanks yes, but more importantly to be present. To enjoy that moment on the mountain for everything that it is, and not to worry about any of the things it isn’t.
I wish to bring more moments like this into my life. Trying to find other Silent Rocks in my life, I discovered that well placed, positive stickers seem to be a good fit for me. Like many in my generation, I love putting stickers on things. It starts with a water bottle, then a laptop, your car, and anything else you can spruce up with the richness of colored vinyl. For me, half the fun was seeing how many stickers you could get for free from companies (I still have the master list of emails if you want thousands of free stickers). Honestly, if you’re a company that markets to millennials and you don’t have a sticker, you are missing out on a lot of free advertising. Even if it wasn’t a company that I supported, I would adorn every object I could find if the sticker was cool and I got them for free. I once spent a weekend tracking down all of the red bicycle lock stations around Salt Lake, plastering them with Epic Brewery stickers. Fun times for sure, but I have realized in this last year that I have been placing stickers for the wrong reasons.
Take your water bottle / laptop / car bumper and look at the free real estate. It may be sporting the words or brand logo of the company that produced it, which is fair, considering you already are using their product. But then slap a sticker on it, or two, or 22. Now that product is an advertisement 22 more times than it was originally, piggy backing company after company on one water bottles back. I hold nothing against these precisely personalized items, I owned and made scores of them in the past and in those moments they made me happy.
My counter argument however, is that we see enough advertisements during the day already, and I have no desire to add to the ads. There is also something clean and beautiful about a single sticker adorning your favorite flat surface. Making the things that matter most stand out by getting rid of the excess. But I still love stickers… So I decided that I would use them for a purpose that benefits me instead of a company. Instead of seeing and add for beer when I look at my things, I now get to read phrases like; enjoy the journey, explore, drink water, go play outside, live simply, and hike Utah. I pay for all my stickers now, but every glance to their glossy surface brings me a miniature moment of mindful bliss.