I hated having to do this a s a child. When I returned home after being away for quite a while, I picked up just to reduce mom's burden.
Then I found myself actually wanting to do it, just for the mental space it gives. The sense of cleanliness you get adds to the quality of the experience.
I think it is underappreciated how you can make almost anything meditative, even things you previously did not like as mentioned in this article.
For me it's loading and unloading the dishwasher. I hated it, still do, but if I'm careful to approach it with a very delicate kind of focus I can lose myself in the deep mysteries of the task.
Seattle has wild (foreign, invasive) blackberries all over the place, and in Summer you can easily drive around a bit, spot them, and then spend twenty minutes picking and eating them. As someone from southern California, it's a marvelous thing for food to just be out there in the wild for the taking.
I used to live in the PNW and picking blackberries, mushrooms, cherry plums & oysters kept me quite busy for most of the year. Where I live now the mushrooms and wild berries are nowhere near as abundant, and I feel quite depressed, I’m also spending a lot less time walking (hiking) than I did before. I should probably move back to the PNW for my health.
I get it, same reason I enjoy gardening alone in general.
Most of us spend our work time balancing 100 different things, putting out fires, bouncing between meetings, answering adhoc pings via calls/zooms/slacks, and struggling to do the deep work we are allegedly paid for in between.
There's a therapeutic aspect to certain kinds of physical hobby/chore work or full focussed hobbyist time that counterbalances this.
Otherwise at the end of a day of being burned out, we ruminate & doom scroll which only makes things worse.
I'm currently on a week-long vacation and it's been so long since I had some proper time off that I forgot how slowly time flows when you're not under pressure.
I do long distance solo road cycling. The riding takes just enough of my cognitive capacity that the rest of my mind wanders lightly, usually not thinking about anything of substance. It feels like meditation to me.
Very nice post. I wish life didn't ruin this for me. As a child, I was forced to pick berries and mushrooms alone when all my friends were playing football - and it made me hate the process with all my heart. But that was so long ago - maybe I should give it one more chance...
If in the process you realize it still triggers you, maybe lessons from dr. Gabor Maté are useful. He teaches that emotional triggers are valuable teachers because they highlight unresolved past trauma.
I also hated picking berries as a child because it was so boring. Nowadays, with so much stress in my life I wouldn't mind spending a day picking berries as it seems pretty relaxing.
I love picking blackberries, sloes, elderberries, elderflowers, crab apples etc from the hedgerows around me in the south of England. I also love then using them to make preserves etc. Very relaxing and rewarding.
Hm, picking redcurrants usually isn't so much work because you collect entire strigs of berries. It's picking the berries off the strigs later that's more annoying but you can do it while watching tv or something.
Walking in cities is often doable on 'autopilot' which annoyingly makes room for my overthinking. Walking in the hills is what probably works better for me as the attention needs to be on the pebbles, stones, holes, path forks.
I hated having to do this a s a child. When I returned home after being away for quite a while, I picked up just to reduce mom's burden.
Then I found myself actually wanting to do it, just for the mental space it gives. The sense of cleanliness you get adds to the quality of the experience.
For me it's loading and unloading the dishwasher. I hated it, still do, but if I'm careful to approach it with a very delicate kind of focus I can lose myself in the deep mysteries of the task.
Wait until you hear about hunting!
Way to ruin something good .
Most of us spend our work time balancing 100 different things, putting out fires, bouncing between meetings, answering adhoc pings via calls/zooms/slacks, and struggling to do the deep work we are allegedly paid for in between.
There's a therapeutic aspect to certain kinds of physical hobby/chore work or full focussed hobbyist time that counterbalances this.
Otherwise at the end of a day of being burned out, we ruminate & doom scroll which only makes things worse.
Life seems a bit better after a long walk preferably somewhere nice