Timelessness

Timelessness: White bird of paradise leaf.

Hello.

Recently I wrote about time and the loss of reference markers I've been experiencing. Turns out, this may be a good recipe for successful seclusion after all.

Ingredient 1: Over the weekend, I heard a podcast from On Point on NPR in which they interviewed a captain from a nuclear submarine who had regularly had long stints submerged, and thus isolated. He discussed how he and his crew dealt with these periods alone, and he said there are three mainstays to success: one, have a disciplined life, a regular routine to follow; two, keep your place clean because it’s all you have, and if it goes downhill, so do you; and three, involve yourself in something you can lose yourself in, such as learning guitar, studying something you love, things that challenge you and release you from the experience of time—or move into the flow state.

Stir in ingredient 2: a friend sent me a report by a UCR researcher, Kate Sweeney, and her team's examination of people's use of mindfulness and flow while being sequestered in Wuhan, China. They determined that it was flow and not mindfulness that made the difference in success for those people. (“Flow is a state in which people become absorbed in an enjoyable activity, such that they become blind to their external environment and unconcerned about the self or the passage of time (Csikszentmihalyi, 1990). To reach a flow state, people must engage in an intrinsically rewarding activity that is just challenging enough to match one’s skill level and that provides clear goals and feedback.”)

This is good news to me as it is a recipe for me to help me get my act together and not only survive but succeed in this period of isolation.

Helpful.