171–180 of 456 posts
Too many negative comments here. This is just someone discovering something new and sharing it very excitedly. Almost 6-7 years ago, I read about a 30min challenge to sit upright without doing anything in a chair challenge. That changed how I think about distractions. If I had written about it, there surely will be people who would just like here say... What is so crazy about it? I do that all the time... To me, this…
The part that seems to need emphasis is that the author happened to walk inside this neighborhood cafe while just walking his dog. To many Americans, the idea of just walking into a cafe is probably alien (you need to drive everywhere).
The Wal Mart plaza is only a mile away, but unfortunately its a fully uphill mile that has me going 200 feet in elevation. And in terms of cafe, it's simply a tiny corner Starbucks. The local joints are about 3 miles out east or west as a start.
I love to sit alone in a cafe - reading. Before smartphones I was reading newspapers or books. Now I read on my phone or tablet. While there, I don’t want to talk to anyone, I just want to sit and read quietly.
Because at the same time they themselves sound entrenched in it by making an effort to take a step back and appreciate something as simple and normal as sitting alone in a cafe.
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Fair. But I'll just say that these are issues that have existed for decades. All recent times have done is bring it yo an unignorable fever pitch.
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Trying to sit still for 30 min without any stimulation at all (no talking, watching, reading) sounds like torture to me.
It can be at first until you get used to it. You can observe your surroundings, make up stories about what is happening. Ask yourself questions. Listen to yourself. This is a bit like excercise. When you first start, 30 minutes of exercise can be torture as your is out of shape and not used to the effort. Keep doing it and it feels better and you feel better. Work on becoming a source of thoughts rather than a consum…
I had to sit still a lot as a child, since I wasn't allowed to have friends or go anywhere. I read a lot, but a lot of the time I was to tired or bored to read, so I'd just defocus my eyes, and disappear into my imagination. It would look like I'm reading, so I wouldn't get punished. In hindsight I'm not sure it's terribly healthy, as I now find it impossible to put up with boring people (which is basically everybody who has time to sit around chatting, almost by definition).
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> after a few trips without disaster 100%. Exposure therapy is the cure for anxiety. I have a personal hunch that part of the massive rise in anxiety in the world is explained by many of us no longer being regularly forced outside of our comfort zones. Before the Internet and smartphones, we were obligated to go into the unknown much more often. It was a constant mandatory exposure therapy. Today, I can't remember th…
> Exposure therapy is the cure for anxiety. Except when it is not. Exposure can make an autistic person's anxiety worse.
> It’s contradictory to sit alone in a café. It’s against the reason cafés exist. > They are designed as meeting spaces. There is no table with a single chair. I'm so confused by this, because every cafe I've ever been to is full of people there alone. It seems to almost be the default, honestly.
For me, cafes are essentially libraries; except cafes actually have reasonable opening hours. I can't get work done at home (too many distractions), so I switch up my environment to one where I am forced to work. Go to any coffee shop in Palo Alto and Menlo Park, and you're bound to see students and tech workers sitting alone, typing away on their laptops. Even in LA, you'll see people editing videos and posting stuf…
If you're not into bar life, it's not that easy to just have spontaneous conversion here. Any invasion of space is seen as odd at best and threatening at worst. Even for neighbors.
You have to realize, that some folks were born in the age of super-information and immediacy. When I take a picture, I get the luxury of immediately see what I got. When I wanted to hear some music, I can search it up, and hear an entire album in a question of seconds. It's an incredible privilege to do that, but at the same time, we got so used to speed, that pausing can be new for us. This year I had the opportunit…
Your comments make me glad I spent a childhood having to use analog phones to connect to the information superhighway - much pausing and reflection involved.
I guess we’ve come full circle with the spend of our societies, when we have a new generation rediscovering how to pause.