The main aim of Meditations for Mortals is to acquaint readers with a broader perspective on what drives our mania for controlling our schedules and inboxes. We fear the present moment, the way that we are “confined to this temporal locality, unable even to stand on tiptoes and peer over the fence into the future, to check that everything’s all right there.” I’ve felt, more times than I care to admit, that despite my heartbeat and mortgage and two walking, talking children, I’m not yet inside my life. Someday it will start, I imagine, the part of life in which I’m really engaged, really moving forward, really jolted with the electricity of having a mind and body that can interact with this wild world. I’ll leave behind this practice life for the real one.
— Hillary Kelly, from her interview of Oliver Burkeman in her essay: “You Are Going to Die.” (The Guardian, October 4, 2024)
Over the past decade, I have reviewed hundreds of studies and interviewed dozens of elite performers, including athletes, scientists, artists, physicians, educators and businesspeople, and I have found the top indicators of people’s lasting success and satisfaction came down to how they answered these five questions:
Did they give their pursuit their all?
Did they live in alignment with their values?
Were they patient and present?
Did they embrace their own vulnerability?
And did they build meaningful and mutually respectful relationships along the way?
To my surprise, no idea has resonated more with Olympic medalists than groundedness — that you can be a good person and reach great heights.
We lived in our bodies as in a constant state of emergency. We wore them out trying to either satisfy or exhaust them. We never succeeded in losing ourselves in sleep or pleasure. We were vigilant and wakeful. We always knew what time it was. We were forever trying to fill or close some gap.
My job is clear: I must protect the transmission, smuggle it out of the theater, to examine it later in my room, see if it still glows. If it does, I might start to think in sentences about it. If the sentences get bossy enough, I might start to write them down. This much I’ve learned—you put enough in, and eventually, if unpredictably, something will come out.
“…Birding has tripled the time I spend outdoors. It has pushed me to explore Oakland in ways I never would have: Amazing hot spots lurk within industrial areas, sewage treatment plants and random residential parks. It has proved more meditative than meditation. While birding, I seem impervious to heat, cold, hunger and thirst. My senses focus resolutely on the present, and the usual hubbub in my head becomes quiet. When I spot a species for the first time — a lifer — I course with adrenaline, while being utterly serene…
“When I step out my door in the morning, I take an aural census of the neighborhood, tuning in to the chatter of creatures that were always there and that I might previously have overlooked. The passing of the seasons feels more granular, marked by the arrival and disappearance of particular species instead of much slower changes in day length, temperature and greenery. I find myself noticing small shifts in the weather and small differences in habitat. I think about the tides…
Of course, having the time to bird is an immense privilege. As a freelancer, I have total control over my hours and my ability to get out in the field. “Are you a retiree?” a fellow birder recently asked me. “You’re birding like a retiree.” I laughed, but the comment spoke to the idea that things like birding are what you do when you’re not working, not being productive.
I reject that. These recent years have taught me that I’m less when I’m not actively looking after myself, that I have value to my world and my community beyond ceaseless production, and that pursuits like birding that foster joy, wonder and connection to place are not sidebars to a fulfilled life but their essence.
It’s easy to think of birding as an escape from reality. Instead, I see it as immersion in the true reality. I don’t need to know who the main characters are on social media and what everyone is saying about them, when I can instead spend an hour trying to find a rare sparrow. It’s very clear to me which of those two activities is the more ridiculous. It’s not the one with the sparrow.
