On the odd occasion when I get a day to myself, I wonder what to do with it. As a parent who works full-time, time off is a rare occurrence. Unstructured time can feel unfamiliar and anxiety-inducing, particularly to those who live by the clock. In these rare moments I try to balance my needs: do I need rest, adventure, solitude or connection? Or do I need something else? But even this process can feel like work.
The question of how to use our time, and indeed our lives, manifests itself in different ways. How do we live a life that is rich in meaning, connection and joy? For some of us this question causes great angst, negatively impacting the way we show up in the world. For others it materialises in quiet doubts that can appear during periods of transition or self-questioning, such as when we’re between jobs, upon retirement or when considering whether to start a family.
Buddhists often engage in the practice of contemplating the fact that our lives are limited and our death is certain. If we only had a few weeks, months, a year or 10 years to live, what would we do with our time?
One tool we can draw on when this question arises is the practice of mindfulness, which encourages the conscious exploration of meaning in our lives. It can help us to develop a gentle, responsive and inquisitive approach to ourselves and others. Through mindfulness we become better able to respond to what is actually present rather than be preoccupied with fantasies about how things ought to be. We also deepen our insight into our motivations, choices and behaviours in real time. This can lead to greater clarity about how our daily decisions align with our deepest intentions.
What is revealed is not always pretty or comfortable. When we look closely we might see that we are making reactive and poorly thought-out decisions several times a day. We might be using our time in a way that hinders our wellbeing rather than supports it. An example is surfing the internet instead of resting when we are tired at the end of the day. We might not usually think anything of it, but with mindful awareness we might recognise that this is leading to a cascading effect of fatigue, poor mood and strain in our relationships.
By using mindfulness to see what is really there, we become more empowered to make choices that support a state of ease, clarity and purpose. Once we are in a balanced state of mind, mindfulness can help us to get in touch with intuitive and bodily ways of knowing (or “embodied cognition” as it is often referred to). This can put us in touch with our more genuine desires for our lives.
One way to access such embodied insight is by developing an awareness of bodily sensations or the soma (often referred to as “interoception”). In mindfulness training, the practitioner becomes aware of the felt sense of the body from the inside out. The instruction is to remain sensitive to the body during the day so that we can sense how it subtly contracts in response to displeasure or disapproval. We sense also how it becomes expansive, easeful and receptive in response to something exciting, interesting or pleasing. Getting to know these different embodied feeling states can give us a hint as to how we might use our time and energy.
Another way to work with the question of meaning is to engage in mindful inquiry and active contemplation. This might involve journalling, engaging the imagination or consciously contemplating a question over time. When I was at a career crossroads, I would ask myself before I went to bed each night: “What should I do next?” Every morning I would wake with a different answer, but within a few months I saw a clear pattern: I wanted to return to study despite the risks and challenges that flowed from the decision.
Another facet to bring into this inquiry is to move beyond the sense of our small, restricted lives into something broader that connects us to our shared humanity. In this way we can flip the question to see what emerges. Instead of “What do I want to do with my life?” we might ask “What does life want from me?” This addresses the trap of thinking that we need to generate our own sense of purpose in an autonomous, individual way and honours the fact that meaning is constituted in and through relationship. We know from people such as Viktor Frankl, Mother Teresa and many other religious figures that altruism, selflessness and acting from a place of compassion for others are the greatest and most rewarding sources of meaning.
Mindfulness can give us the tools to bring awareness to the micro choices we make on a daily basis that may not align with what truly calls and enlivens us. As our mindfulness practice deepens, we can better access our embodied and intuitive sense of our passions and interests and how we might use our particular talents, gifts and skills to serve ourselves and the world around us. We might find meaning in unexpected places: in a letter penned to an old friend, in a decision to start volunteering at a community centre, or in deep moments of silence under the night sky. By consciously orienting to meaning and exploring it in the body, mind and heart, we open to what might be possible beyond our preconceived ideas of how to live our lives.
Dr Nadine Levy is a senior lecturer at the Nan Tien Institute. She coordinates the health and social wellbeing program and the graduate certificate in applied mindfulness