A Dumb Experiment

Sit with it.

I hear this as my forefinger swipes and clicks and swipes and X’s out.

In various moments throughout the day, between all the busy doingness, I get the urge to consume. Disengage. Distract.

I check the podcasts I subscribe to: nothing new.

My email: inbox zero.

Substack: silence.

I recently removed myself from Instagram (precisely to thwart moments like this), so I’m reduced to checking LinkedIn.

This is desperate.

I feel like an addict scraping the remnants of a hit for a little taste of the high.

Finally, I admit to myself that I’ve exhausted all my resources.

What to do, what to do, what to do?

That’s when the voice comes in: Sit with it.

But what is it? That feeling we run from in moments of stillness; a vague discomfort.

My initial reaction is to push it away like a playground bully.

But I don’t WANNA feel it!

Then I hear the thought pipe in (or beam in or telegraph out), seemingly from nowhere.

Sit with it.

Sit with the discomfort.

Allow it.

Get curious about it.

Invite it in instead…