As I have told you already, I'm a little late with reading and responding with all my attention... just imagine, you had published your post in a magazine or newspaper and now my (paper) letter finally gets into your mail box ;-)

When I saw your headline, I got really excited, because it looked like a very interesting subject and I knew you would present it in an eye opening and inspiring way.

As usual, my head was spinning a bit with all kinds of thoughts, some of them contradicting and a concern, that I might be dealing with things completely wrong...

As I read through the paragraph "Origins", memories are awakened. Of a night on a train, when my girlfriend had given me Hermann Hesse's book "Siddhartha" and I read it overnight. Just to learn later on in your text, that maybe the mind shouldn't be wandering like that...

Then when you ask your question,

I would like you to recall the last time you felt sad or anxious...

I realized again, how very privileged I am. The things that may "bother" me are not even worth mentioning in the end. They can mostly be dealt with, with a decent amount of patience and the rest is the way it is.

And then it seems, my strategy of "stress relief" doesn't seem so good after all... but maybe only at first sight. I told you, how I'd do something simple and how it would help me feeling better. It all started, when my mother told me the supposedly Arabian saying: "When you feel bad, go do the dishes". Ok, I might choose to do something different and now that I think about it, its not so much to seek distraction, it must be something else.

In fact, that is something that seemed nonlogical to me so far about this method, but now it makes sense. With a simple task, the mind is not really distracted from the "problem"... I mean, of course, you can do the dishes and still have your thoughts focused on what makes you feel bad. But maybe it really is a kind of meditation and by just watching your hands do their job, it might work the same way as focusing on your breath, like you suggest in the end (?)

It helps me calm down and get a different perspective. So, the way I would like to describe the effect is, that its not so much about avoiding the "pain" but more or less dissolving it...

One reason, why I feel privileged is my job. The fact, that I can support myself as an artist and of course the kind of work I do and how I do it. I spend days going by in literally no time at all, when I'm in the flow of creating my artworks. You really are fully in the present at any given moment...

I know the results of your homework without even doing it now, because it is something I experience all the time. When I paint, I loose all track of time. I could set the alarm at one hour and still be surprised when it goes off. In aikido, we sit for several minutes before the training and it is pretty much the same thing. And when I want to consciously "empty" my mind, I simply focus on "what thought will come next?".

And now, with your words still floating through my mind, I'm going to go down to my favorite café, with a big smile on my face 😊