The more I read Marcel Proust’s “In A Search Of Lost Time,” the more I see and feel people from the previous centuries were much more mindful than most of us are today.
The contrast between the mindfulness of previous centuries and our current state is stark and thought-provoking. What is the main reason that people earlier were rather more mindful than we are today? I think it is because, today, most of us watch TV, play video games, work on computers, surf websites, and scroll social media on smartphones. The protagonist of “In A Search Lost Time” observed many details in their surroundings. He contemplated, among others, the sea, gardens, walls, shadows, works of art, and people. There are many marvelous descriptions of all the abovementioned phenomena.
While reading Proust’s work, I was reminded that the XIX-century Russian writer Fyodor Dostoyevsky also remarkably described many phenomena, seemingly fiddling.
Of course, the hard work and genius of the writers mentioned above let them clarify seemingly fiddling phenomena that a typical person cannot explain. That’s why people still read Proust’s and Dostoyevsky’s works of art until today (I wrote this text on the 15th of December, 2023). Still, I feel most of us have too many distractions nowadays. I mentioned these distractions at the beginning of this text. I think scrolling down one’s smartphone is one of the biggest distractions today, not only for me but for millions of other people.
The truth is that I do not know what the “mindfulness” movement means today.
Perhaps I should show interest in it. I believe people born in the XIX century and earlier were much more mindful than the XXI century man. They read more and had fewer distractions than we have. I can imagine their brains and minds worked better than ours. I think they were able to observe and describe many more details than we can do. Perhaps they would be able to tell me something about mindfulness.
