Rolling Stones Got It Right

(c) Andrew Safer 2022

Unlike many approaches to boosting your health and wellness, Mindfulness does not teach you how to improve your endurance, get more smiles out of your day, or feel peachy-keen. In routine daily activities, you might notice a hidden calculation that tells you if you’re getting what you want, and a challenging voice asking, “What’s in it for me?”

Mindfulness isn’t transactional like that. You don’t get to bargain for a desired result. The Rolling Stones’ lyrics overwhelm with the inescapable message: “You can’t always get what you want. But if you try sometime, you might find, you get what you need.”

So what is this Mindfulness that turns conventionality on its ear?

Instead of being rewarded with a payoff, we are training the mind. We might find that some understanding develops along the way. This mind is at the root of all complexities, all emotions, all reactivity, all clarity, all decisions. Why focus on pieces of the puzzle when you can have the whole enchilada? It’s like focusing on the unknowns in the daily weather report, instead of learning the large-scale weather patterns. Today’s weather forecast is of course useful when we’re getting dressed or marching off to the swimming hole. But there is no substitute for the big picture.