Philosophy and Mindfulness are Pillars of a Complete Life
It’s worth overcoming initial skepticism to add these crucial tools to our lives
--
An admission: I usually skim or outright skip the lengthy cooking-recipe-website-esque intro paragraph(s) before most articles get going. Shitty ones usually serve the same rhetorical purpose as the headline, and if I’ve already clicked the thing — as I’m aware you have — then I’ve already bought in and the writer doesn’t need to offer an elevator pitch. I’m desperate for knowledge and short on time. Just gimme the goods, man.
“Why waste time say lot word when few word do trick?” — Kevin Malone
Learning good. Do for brain.
But one of the main problems with this default intellectual impatience is that it renders certain important concepts witheringly boring —ones that take time, effort, and patience to blossom fully.
The trap is that their value isn’t evident until you’re already neck-deep, and most people won’t bother to get that far.
Philosophy and mindfulness are two such concepts I’ll explore here, and if you’re the type to react to them with skepticism, “meh,” or a vomit emoji, let me try to sell you on their worth.
Philosophy: kinda weird on the outside, chocolatey good from within
If you’re like me, for most of life you’ve had this persistent notion that philosophy was just a field for intellectuals with too much time on their hands — a bit too abstract and needlessly complicated for how little practical application it has.
From the outside, philosophy seems like it has little or nothing to do with the pressing matters of day-to-day life nor with our long-term goals. Especially when the latter is generally reduced in the hellscape to career aspirations, and unless you’re planning on being a professor of philosophy, well…
For most of us, when we’re too busy with assignment due dates and work deadlines, interpersonal relationships and trauma-healing journeys, hell, even laundry and stacks of dishes, who has time to read Descartes or Hume or whoever?
