Mindfulness and the Confusion of Vague Definitions
My neighborhood hosts a weekly group meeting called Questions, Ideas, and Conversation in which neighbors come together to discuss predetermined topics generally related to some sort of philosophy or social issue that might be of interest to us. This week's conversation was about the commodification of mindfulness and how that affects the value of the practice as it relates to personal improvement.
The discussion itself led to a variety of tangents and showed that "mindfulness" as a word holds a different value to all who use it. Some spoke of mindfulness as if synonymous with meditation, some equated it to finding an internal peace, some thought it was a great consideration for how our actions affect others, a few related mindfulness to self awareness. One guy incited some briefly heated debate by referring to the practice and claim of mindfulness as "complete bullshit."
I think the vague elasticity of the word is what makes it such a prime target for commodification. Like house flippers painting walls in "neutral" colors, the lack of a unified meaning for this word has made it a blank slate for consumers to make of it what they will. Whatever it is, maybe with an exception for the 'bullshit' guy, mindfulness has a positive meaning for most people. Mindfulness has become the go-to buzz word for capitalizing on the dreams of peace.
I had to sit back and think about what mindfulness meant to me, because I don't really use that word in my personal vocabulary. I have yet to understand the meditation thing, nothingness terrifies me (and maybe getting over that is the whole point of meditation) and my mind typically runs several processes at once at any given moment. Clearing the mind to think of nothing seems like a wildly irresponsible waste of already limited time. I suppose I do find a way to relax the mind by listening to music while completing mind games or puzzles, if that counts.
I've spent a lot of time developing a sense of self-awareness. I needed that to move past a lot of personal hurdles growing up autistic and anxiety ridden. I've never really had to work toward considering how my actions affect other people -that's all part of that anxiety thing - my everyday thoughts were consumed with how my actions might affect other people and I became obsessed with minimizing that possibility whenever possible. But perhaps the contrary holds true under the same blanket term of mindfulness. Once achieving a decent grasp of self-awareness, I was able to work on allowing myself to affect others and not being so wildly uncomfortable when they let me know that I've done so (that was a hard one).
So mindfulness holds a variety of meanings to me, I suppose, which is why I don't use the word. It's an umbrella term that causes confusion among discourse but is prime material for advertising. You can be aware of your self, aware of your thoughts and feelings and existence, aware of others around you, of their feelings and expressed emotions and how you affect those things, you can be aware of your surroundings and aware of your actions... but you can't be aware of how someone else defines a word until you ask them in no uncertain terms. When do we do that, though? Not very often.
I suspect this is the case with a lot of arguments that occur, especially through text based discussion as inflections get lost and definitions are further blurred. English is a remarkable language but sure leaves a lot of room for trouble. Be mindful of that.