Getting Small: Concentrate

Sometimes people who are philosophical get rather analytical. They over-think. Enjoyment shouldn’t really be critiqued.

The focus should be upon using one’s senses to enjoy one’s surroundings – whatever they are.

The secret to enjoyment is in a special kind of concentration. It’s special because it’s forced. It’s the will to concentrate. It’s the face of someone trying in vain to think of a name. It’s the look on the face of a child who doesn’t understand as a parent yells, “Concentrate!”

It’s a thought without something in it. It’s sleeping in a tent when someone whispers, “Did you hear that?” and you wake up to concentrate. “I don’t hear anything,” you say as you peer out your tent flap. “See anything?” “No. All I see are trees and snow geese.”

And yet, are snow geese and trees not the most obvious things to see? Why aren’t you incredulous? “Snow geese? Really?” Your surroundings are more incredible than you realize. It could be that your sense of things is limited by your desire to get back to sleep or back to work or back to whatever it is you think you should be doing.

Rarely do people stop and stare like sheep or cows. For most of the industrialized people alive today one’s ability to sensuously experience is impaired by rationality. We don’t really notice ourselves and the world we’re in. If we did, we’d see that in the moon light there are translucent clouds reminiscent of a long lost girl’s nightgown.

A special kind of concentration is a key to enjoyment. It’s more than a matter of being alive to survive another day of survival. Look up from reading. Right now! Gaze and gaze and gaze! Gaze into the distance. Select an object to contemplate. Forget that you know what it is. Imagine that you’re a snow goose sitting in your kitchen. Gaze at your snow goose feet. Aren’t they amazing? Try them out and go for a gander.

With your your new and improved human-snow goose concentration, a sound, a taste, a touch, a smell can start a secret reverie that only you can know. It is in this lonely self of yours that you can secretly thrill to the tiniest of things. A special concentration is yours alone. Enjoy flashes of living memories strung on a wire of hours, days and nights like multicoloured Christmas lights.

People who see you concentrating will think that you’re either thinking – which you are, in a way – or that you’re an idiot. Either way is fine with you. You’re not so easily insulted. You’re getting small after all. Idiots know contentment better than most. Idiots under-think. In egolessness they live small, easily fascinated by nothing much at all. With new-found goose concentration, you can thrill to sensuous ecstatic experiences. Only you can enjoy. No one will enjoy for you.

Have you ever heard people say, “It’s the little things”? It’s meant to be about embracing a simplistic non-materialistic lifestyle and noticing the little things. Most people don’t get it. They pay lip-service to this bit of sage advice.

Back in the day Steve Martin, the comedian, used to do a bit he called “Get small“. It was funny. In the context of the time it alluded to doing drugs. The idea to get small relates to the Philosophy of Enjoyment.

There is enjoyment available that is not drug induced. There is enjoyment in your own particular smallness. Be humble. Above your head there is infinity. You are small.

For where does happiness dwell? As we struggle to make contact with life through a philosophy for one, keep in mind that it is not a sign of superiority, but a sign of inferiority to others that we are thus occupied. You there in your man’s body! You there in your woman’s body! You there in your body!

Whatever shape it’s in, you are crouching to spring at the greatest thing in the world: Enjoyment! Turn tedium into pleasure and dreariness into lovely sensations. Start from scratch and get small.