We may not have evolved to be happy. Natural selection, the
process that guides our evolution, favors adaptations that help us reproduce
successfully. This means surviving long enough to mate, snag a partner, and
then support our children's survival. Evolutionary forces don't particularly
'care' whether we enjoy our life--unless this increases our survival for mating
potential. And they really don't 'care' about what happens to us after our
child-bearing and protecting years are over.
But we care. While
most of us think the survival of humanity is a good idea, we would also like to
be able to enjoy our lives while we're here. It doesn't seem like a lot to ask.
Thinking and planning, wonderful and useful as they are, are
at the heart of our daily emotional distress because, unlike other tools, we
can't seem to put these tools down when we don't need them.
They keep us worrying about the future, regretting the past,
comparing ourselves to one another in thousands of ways, and forever scheming
about how to make things better. This makes it very difficult to be truly
satisfied for more than a brief time. Our constant thinking can make it
impossible to wholeheartedly enjoy a meal, or listen to a concert, to fully
listen to our child, or to fall back asleep in the middle of the night.
Mindfulness developed through thousands of years of cultural
evolution as an antidote to the natural habits of our hearts and minds that
make life so much more difficult than it needs to be. Mindfulness is a
particular attitude toward experience, or way of relating to life, that holds
the promise of both alleviating our suffering and making our lives rich and
meaningful. It does this by attuning us to our moment to moment experience and
giving us direct insight into how our minds create unnecessary anguish.
--Ronald Siegel, The Mindfulness Solution
--Ronald Siegel, The Mindfulness Solution
