the Ladybird Book of Mindfulness

This book, part of a recent effort popular among British hipsters in their late-20's-early-30's (no actual research done here I'm just going by stuff I've seen on social media and my own preheld stereotypes) to revive the old Ladybird Learners - you know, those A5 hardback books for kids with delightfully calming full-page watercolour illustrations and easily-readable friendly informative text educating the young reader about a particular topic, for example 'Vehicles' or 'Dinosaurs' or 'Space'? Everyone's dad or mum had them when they were young and they've kept them somewhere in a box of old stuff and you probably had a passing familiarity too throughout your own childhood because of these books' sentimental value to your parents. Eh, maybe I'm assuming a minor aspect of my early life to be more culturally typical than it is. Do you know what I'm on about? No? If not you may as well just give up, this post has nothing for you. Actually no, stay with me. You might like the idea of this. You might not like this post though, I can tell from glancing over what I've already written this is gonna be a pretty sketchy one. This has been a horrific paragraph and all - I'm starting a new one.

   So, anyway, this is part of a publishing effort to pay homage to these classics, only with a satirical twist - these are Ladybird Learners Books 'For Grownups' - i.e. tackling not general concepts to educate oneself about in childhood but large social and cultural challenges facing [contemporary British hipsters in their late-20's-early-30's, sue me for inaccuracy]. Titles include not only Mindfulness but Hangovers, Dating, The Wife, The Husband, The Shed and Hipsters and a couple of others that I can't be bothered to click 'next' on my Amazon search in order to name. The format is the exact same: calming full-page watercolour illustrations (cannibalised from the Ladybird's classic range of books) and easily-readable friendly informative text, only rather than educating, every page pretends to explain the illustration in a slightly absurd and completely sardonic way. To give you a taste of what this looks like: a delightful calming full-page watercolour illustration of a mill in a windy cornfield with autumn clouds scudding by overhead: the easily-readable friendly informative text to the left reads "Mindfulness is the skill of thinking you are doing something when you are doing nothing. One of the good things about mindfulness is that you get to do a lot of sitting down. Sitting down is good for the mind because so much energy is stored in the lap." Or a delightfully calming full-page watercolour illustration of a middle-aged farmer kneeling at his prize turnip amid a largely-weedy field: the easily-readable friendly informative text beside it announcing "In ancient times, Guru Bhellend entered a state of mindfulness that lasted thirty-five years. During this time, he thought about everything. When he had finished, he wrote the answer on a grain of rice. He never married." It's pretty low-level entertainment but amusing in a dry little way, like how a stranger who manages to be both a bit eccentric and a bit boring starts making comment-sized chunks of conversation with you during a prolonged passive encounter (e.g. at a bus stop if you had first exchanged a brief complaint about tardy public transport to break the ice). (I have no idea where that came from.)

   Mindfulness, to get back to this book, is a concept much punted about by young adults I know, or at least the culture they're a part of: it's a pretty vague but agreeable state or feeling people try to experience to improve inner peace, self-knowledge, stress relief, and a variety of other kinds of psychological and emotional stability. It's a lovely idea, one the practice of which can involve almost anything depending on what helps you focus on a simple physical repetitive task or arrangement of mental/sensual inputs, so as to free the mind from concerns about anything not included within that experience. For some people it's scented candles and a hot chocolate and knitting along to folk music, for some people it's jogging to a park bench and sitting down and staring into space for a bit, for some people it might be stroking a cat, for some reorganising a bookshelf, for some making chapattis or pancakes or cheese on toast, improvising jazz on the piano, whittling in the bath, cracking open a can of lager and watching football or cult sitcoms, covering entire pads of paper in intricate doodles while vacantly humming along to Classic FM, whatever. Variety is the spice of life.
   I've actually tried practicing mindfulness recently;* to be honest it just felt like a pretty normal 'solitary attempt to relax' so the deliberate intentionality with which I embarked upon it just made it feel forced, and while I certainly had a peaceful life-affirming time, it wasn't in a particularly different way to any normal successful 'solitary attempt to relax'. Hence my cynicism about mindfulness, which endeared me to this book's skewering of those strange impractical beings among us who strive for it. Just calm down and relax like everyone else does, do something you enjoy and affix your attention to it so you enjoy it properly. That's not a groundbreaking mode of how-to-do-life (this is though - lolz); it's just part of how you should be doing stuff anyway.
   I think this might be one of the most stream-of-consciousness/actually-just-bonkers posts this blog has ever witnessed. I'll just wrap it up here. This Ladybird Book of Mindfulness, along with (one would expect) the other [7? 9?] books in the series. Note to prospective readers of this book - if you're interested in mindfulness, expect to be amused but not aided in your striving to be mindful. More to the point, if you're interested in mindfulness, stop taking it consciously seriously as a lifestyle/mindset/worldview pursuit! Just start relaxing naturally - throw your mind and senses more fully into your activities and pleasures, whatever they may be.

Peace, fellow human.


* The first time I literally just listened to techno-funk remixes of vintage soul tunes for ninety minutes while colouring in a mandala and eating pistachios. The second time, I'd found out that the YouVersion Bible app has an audio feature, so I coloured in another (arguably better, at least more intricate) mandala while listening to the entirety of Ecclesiastes and eating a small range of sandwiches. The third time, I lit an incense stick, made a cup of lemon & ginger & honey tea, and just listened to Kanye West's new album The Life of Pablo all the way through (only available on Tidal and, erm, Piratebay, because nobody has Tidal and nobody's going to get it just because Kanye's on too erratic and immense of an ego-trip to just release an album like a normal $53million-in-debt Greatest Artist Of All Time would. Dammit Kanye, why do you do this to yourself!?).
   I would highly recommend any of these activities as 'solitary attempts to relax'. Reflective prayer and going for walks and reading Good (Søren Kierkegaard or Emily Dickinson or the Catcher in the Rye or the Remains of the Day kind of Good) books are also things I've found surefire ways of instilling clarity and tranquility.