In an earlier post I wrote about what the famous quote attributed to Socrates… “the unexamined life is not worth living” means to me and how I can utilise mindfulness (which I believe is inferred in the quote) in my day to day life.
What I hadn’t mentioned is what might happen when you stop using mindfulness to examine your life and start falling into the bad habit of living life on autopilot.
This is what has happened to me.
Firstly, a few days ago I got booked for speeding not by a speed camera but by a police officer with a mobile radar device. It was around 9:30pm on the Wistow to Strathalbyn road and I was doing 111km/h in a 100km/h zone.
Why was I doing 11km/h over the speed limit? I just wasn’t mindful of my speed, I was concentrating on the destination rather than (the speed of) my journey and in turn I was penalised for it.
Not a good thing when you’re running out of demerit points on your licence. Yes, I have been caught speeding a number of times by speed camera and always for going about 10km/h over the limit.
That’s inattention not hooliganism.
I’m currently waiting for my fine to come through to me by post and also whether I’ve run out of demerit points which means I might lose my licence altogether for a period of time or, I might get one point back as a second chance.
Secondly, I’ve started to get migraine headaches again, culminating in one that knocked me off my feet the day after I got done for speeding (I’m sure the stress of it all didn’t help matters).
It’s times like this that my body forces me to stop and take stock of what is happening to it and what I found isn’t that good.
Since coming to Goolwa I’ve put on about 10kgs and my overall health has noticeably deteriorated because of it. All of that hard work I put in last year after my Type 2 Diabetes diagnosis was starting to fall apart fast.
I’ve gotten lazy, comfortable and content. Again, I’m eating and drinking the wrong things, at the wrong time and in the wrong portions. I haven’t been walking due to my knees being sore which is due to my weight gain.
All of this is also because of inattention, of me not being mindful of what I’m doing in my day to day life but now that I’ve caught myself doing all this, I can now get back on the mindful wagon again and get back on track.
In essence, I need to practise what I preach and walk the walk. I need to stop getting obsessed with things that take my eye off the ball and I need to stop listening to others that have a contrary view to me when it comes to my overall health and wellbeing.
I need to get back to living the examined life, the mindful life. I need to slow down, steady the ship, be still and simplify my life again because life is the greatest teacher of all and if I haven’t learnt my lessons now after what has happened to me over the last week, then I never will.
But I won’t let that happen.
Peace,
Corey 🙂