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If you study American time use, it becomes a little clearer. The primary we stay in the present is consuming media. Meditation is a stretch for most of us. When it should be socializing and doing things with our hands. If hunter gatherers had a stronger mental health foundation in a survival situation with death all around, it’s because they socialized frequently and did things with their hands.

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So true! I do think we might be living in a particular culture and society that makes being present harder than it was during other historical time periods. It definitely makes us isolated and alone.

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And they culturally processed death, trauma and grief as a collective. We have abandoned all of this with the idea that we just have to "stay positive".

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Oh, the cult of staying positive. Sometimes I'm just sad/angry/tired/over it and that's okay.

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At no other time in history have we been flooded with information, constant distraction AND been absorbing mass amounts of cumulative trauma and grief without any collective processing. The pace of life is insane. Some of these tools were designed by people living a monastic life - I mean, I could do it too, living a monastic life! So I think we do the best we can to acquire the tools. AND we give ourselves grace because these tools were not designed for what we are dealing with now really.

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Yes, though surely other monks could be annoying, too? Not quite as annoying as family? Hard to say.

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Haha - probably so! like a whole mess of siblings.

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Reading this again, I’m realizing how much I judge myself because I don’t have it figured out! Maybe we are just not wired to be contented, so it’s actually a process to get there. I don’t know. But it doesn’t seem to be easy

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I think it's always a process, which is hard to accept. We want to have "gotten there" and be done, but it doesn't work like that. The work of figuring out who we are is lifelong. On the upside, material for infinite newsletters!

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