Ailantha
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The Monkey on my mind

5/20/2014

4 Comments

 
    I've always been one of those addle-brained people who have a hard time focusing and concentrating.  I don't always hear what I'm told the first time and I usually need to have instructions repeated.
     Unless I stop and repeat to myself my parking location before I enter a store,  I'll end up wandering cluelessly around the parking looking for my car afterwards.  I'm bad with directions.
    Though I love to read I'm not a partitularly good reader and sometimes have to read passages several times over before absorbing the gist. 
     Though I teach piano I'm a poor sight reader and the only way I can get through a piece of music is by identifying the chord patterns. 
     I'm by nature forgetful.  And disorganized.  And anxious. Whatever I'm doing, I feel like I should be doing something else. My mind is never clear, not even during yoga class when our teacher has told us to put our minds for the next hour between the last thought and the next thought.  How refreshing that would be, but I can't turn it off. 
    I'm always ruminating, figuring, or mentally re-writing some scene from my past with better dialogue and a better ending.  Yet I seldom come up with any productive thinking.
    When I was young I used to be a constant daydreamer, a mental meanderer, but my full-time daydreaming has  grown up into more high-speed cogitating.  Nowadays daydreaming is more my fall-back mode. 
    If I don't always come across this way in my daily work and social exchanges, it's because
I've worked at learning memorization, organization and mental tricks that help me keep it all together most of the time.  But I've had t work at it.  More than most people, I think. And I have improved over time compared to when I was young.
    Subsequently I've always felt like there was something wrong with me, something keeping me from reaching my full potential. 
    Then I learned that the Buddhists have a term for my problem:  I've got a mind monkey.
    According to Wikipedia, a  mind monkey is "...a
Buddhist term meaning
unsettled; restless; capricious; whimsical; fanciful; inconstant; confused; indecisive; uncontrollable."
    That's my mind.
    Author Daniel Smith in his book "Monkey Mind" described a crowd of monkeys constantly swinging across his mind hooting and throwing banana peels at each other.
    That's also my mind.
 
    Is it by chance yours, too?

    Which begs the question:  What's with this mind monkey?  What's going on really?
    Though the diagnosis wasn't around in my day, I've wondered in recent years if I'm just plain old garden-variety ADHD. 
    But now I don't think I am.  I believe that my monkey has a different name.
    Tune in tomorrow...

   

   
 
   






4 Comments
Romaine
5/20/2014 03:17:52 am

The monkey in my mind seems to thrive on sugar. I used to have much more anxiety and restlessness going on but since I cut out most forms of sugar the monkey seems to have calmed down.

I noticed last Christmas that I was so anxious I could barely drive. During that time I was eating a lot holiday sweets. I cut them out and my anxiety dissipated. Of course I still have an occasional sweet thing to eat - but only about once a month or so because it's so hard to stop once I get going on a sugar groove.

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Patti
5/20/2014 04:23:38 am

Well, I, too, have always have been a great devourer of sweets and I know what you mean about getting into a sugar groove. I guess I just never put the cause-and-effect together. But give up sugar? I think it's a good idea but, wow, that would be 'waaaay hard for me!

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Romaine
5/20/2014 05:10:46 am

Unfortunately I have a monkey stomach now that acts up anytime I eat too many carbs and that is about the main thing that keeps my sugar consumption in check.

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Patti
5/20/2014 05:22:03 am

Sorry about your tummy issues. I can see how that sort of thing would be a disincentiviser. Thank goodness there are lots of other good things to eat! I read another article the other day on how the over consumption of carbs and processed foods might affect how your body metabolizes everything else. I'll email it to you.

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