Day Seven (extra content): A Mindful Drive Home

If you are in any way familiar with the concept of therapy, then you are also likely familiar with the concept of coping skills or tools to help you get through the challenges of your particular mental illness or life struggles. Since there have been a number of folks who have said they are reading for insight to help someone else or help themselves or just because they have experienced depression too, I thought it might be good to occasionally post some extra content that is helpful for coping or helpful in giving assistance to those you love who are dealing with mental illness. To that end, today I'm posting something on mindfulness.

Mindfulness is, in short, being really and truly present in a particular moment and noticing everything you can about it. It can be helpful for calming anxiety and getting yourself out of a dark mood by way of focusing on the present instead of the past, the future, or the flood of emotions you are feeling. It's a great way of sort of disengaging yourself from your illness, even if only for the duration of the exercise. Obviously, if you are (or someone you know is) in a crisis situation, that is not the time for this. The time for this is before you get to that point and can be a means of helping you avoid getting to that crisis point.

There are many ways of practicing mindfulness, but when I employ it, I like to write about my surroundings or what I am experiencing in a mindful way.  To that end, I am going to cut and paste something I wrote after driving home one evening this past April (2014). The back story is simple in that I had gone out to get some sandwiches and fries from a local fast food place for our family's supper and was driving home. I don't really know what possessed me to start noticing everything in such a mindful way, but I did and wrote it down later. Without further ado, here is my unedited mindful drive home.

****

The smooth plastic cylindrical signal lever slips easily between my fingers and I deftly flick it down with practiced facility as I apply pressure to the brake pedal beneath my right foot to bring the car to a halt at the traffic light. The light changes red to green but I don't see it and instead move forward with the rhythm of the cars in front of me. Hand over hand, the steering wheel moves beneath my palms in a fluid motion done almost without thought and turns the car easily left across the intersection and onto the main road. The smell of the food in the bag on the seat beside me pricks at my nose and although objectively, the smell is pleasant, it does not tantalize or excite me into wanting to eat. It is simply a means to an end. I glance at the sky as the car moves beneath and around me, propelling me forward along this stretch of road I know so well. It is painted thick with clouds that hang heavy and pendulous, full of unshed raindrops and darkening the early evening sky. The sky on this late April evening would normally be almost fully light because of the shift of the earth's revolution toward the sun, but it is muted, an ashy dark grey tinged by palest blue. I look toward the south as I roll along and see the barest peek of pink near the horizon's edge, obviously the edge of the storm that is closer to clearer skies and brighter sunlight. As I drive, my speed increases a bit too much, so I lift my foot from the accelerator and coast, letting the downward incline of the road both slow me down and keep me moving forward. I feel a small swoop in my stomach, almost akin to the sensation of flying but it is mostly in my imagination and passes in a blink, further obliterated by the application of the brakes as I again come to a stop at another light. The light changes quickly and this time, I notice, the bright green of the arrows urging me to turn left seems brighter, more electric, almost as though the lights are possessed of some ability to compensate for darker skies and storms. I am through the intersection before I know it and feel the rumble of the train tracks beneath my wheels as I continue the drive home. It is only the first set of tracks I will cross as there is another yet to come. Over and over, I make the motions that move the car in the direction of home, nearly all of them without any conscious thought as they are contained quite fluently within my muscles' memory and well-worn neural pathways that need precious little to fully engage them. Outside the windows, the trees sway in a heavy wind, leaves dancing and branches waving. The colours of the trees, grass, and even flowers seems somehow less vibrant, less green, less bright, possibly indicating that spring is at an end and summer is fast approaching. Perhaps the lack of colour is a reflection of the tenebrous nature my own inner thoughts or simply the fast fading light. The second set of tracks approaches and as I cross, my mind flashes on thoughts of dark nights and even darker thoughts. The thoughts are gone in a moment, but they have succeeded in unsettling my mind. Another application of the turn signal lever and the familiar sight of our neighbourhood comes into view. Houses built when I was born, various designs and nothing the same about any of them. Some have one level, some have two, some, like our own, are a split level design. Some lawns are meticulously tended, some need mowing. There are flowers planted and shrubs here and there, but nothing consistent except the trees. Lining our street like sentinels, each house has trees in its yard - junipers, dogwoods, Bradford pears, and stately oaks reach their branches into the sky, greeting me along the final stretch of my journey. As I near our home, I see our oak tree, very old and very tall standing proudly in its place, so sturdy and determined to withstand anything. I love that tree. It is beautiful in any season and in any light. Although we have not lived here long, I already have many memories of it - our children playing beneath its branches, pictures of them in front of it on the first day of school, the beauty of a sunset filtering through its leaves, the lovely shape of it against the sky on a cold and snowy winter day. It is a beacon and a symbol of hearth and home. I park the car and get out to go inside. The warmth of the air and its humidity are ominously oppressive, almost syrup like and in the distance I hear a low rumble of thunder as I open the front door, home once again.