I have a bit of a “guilty pleasure” that I look forward to on Saturday mornings when I don’t have to work. One of the homeboys in the unit gets People Magazine and when he is done with them… he passes them along to me. I have to admit that I look forward to these quiet moments… sitting out on a bench on the South Yard with coffee… watching the ships come in and out of the loading docks across the water and enjoying a pop culture catch up as the sun rises. I was deep into the grips of my pleasure this past Saturday morning… sun shining on my face… appreciating the moment when I turned the page and saw that it was the “Sundance Film Festival” section. Now… at face value… this doesn’t mean much. Cool pictures of pretty people in snow gear and on red carpets but I had a real “ahh-ha” moment of sorts as I am looking through the pictures…
I realized that I have not thought… not once… about the Sundance Film Festival over the last few years. Now this may sound obvious to you guys out there given my life circumstance but to me… it was such a powerful realization. Prior to starting this current journey at the beach… my mind was constantly occupied with thoughts of film festivals… film premiers… events… names of this actor or that in that “hot” movie or developing that cool project… it completely consumed me. And sitting on this bench… realizing that absolutely none of these thoughts have entered my consciousness as of late is such a drastic shift from what “I thought” I would be thinking about and missing while I was incarcerated. I remember thinking that I am going to want to be out there doing all the “things” so bad and how hard it is going to be to see and hear about everyone advancing their career and “making things happen” while I am locked behind these walls. But I haven’t thought about any of that… at all. And that realization is extremely profound.
We… as a society… continually preach about being precious with our time… make sure we surround ourselves with the people that we want to be around and the people that lift us up rather than tear us down… to prioritize our days for maximum productivity… and so on. And while most of these notions are 100% valid… I think we have to equally prioritize being precious with our thoughts. I was so mentally consumed with climbing some made up ladder within the entertainment industry (or any industry) in order to prove to myself and everyone else that I was worth a damn but all of this mental energy was absolutely pointless (if not detrimental) to my life. How can we start to train our brains… through our thoughts… to focus this mental juice on the aspects of life that strengthen our relationships with loved ones… that center us and guide us toward a more fulfilling life as opposed to a life that we think will be more fulfilling “if we can only get over there”? As with all other worthwhile endeavors… it will be a daily conscious effort to focus our thoughts in this way but I think one that will allow us to find those moments of joy that we so desperately want.
Hope everyone out there finds their own little guilty pleasure to enjoy… who knows what kind of interesting “ah-ha” moment you may discover.
Stay Healthy. Stay Active. Be precious with those thoughts of yours 🙂