So I wrote previously about where my disproportionate love of parks came from. Do I think sitting down and watching the ducks can actually save people’s lives… people who experience real and debilitating mental health conditions? Maybe not. Although, if I did, I probably wouldn’t admit it. But: I’m certain it can help, in a unique way, as one of a suite of strategies for controlling our own health, and even our own minds.
It’s a strategy that we probably don’t take seriously enough as other approaches to internal-self-management. It doesn’t have the added physical outcomes of vigorous exercise, not as fashionable or sexy as yoga (someone show me the Instagram BF’s filming stories of girls watching birdlife in their bikinis), as trendy and hip as meditating, as cool and song-worthy as self-medicating, or propped up by a profit-driven industry like conventional medicine, or even as Divinely-sanctioned as praying. I feel like those who know about this secret are largely happy to keep it to themselves. Probably because it works better by yourself. But the nice thing about this health intervention (apart from being free) is that it also heals the medicine: the more we benefit from nature, the more we appreciate it, and the more we nurture and protect it. So, for the sake of us, and for the ducks, here is another effort to change that…
**
Life can be mentally brutal. You might even say this is one of the defining qualities of modern life. Rote learning, binge study, menial and repetitive professional work. And possibly kids. Tasks that typically require our full mental attention to undertake competently, and often leave us exhausted and fatigued, and susceptible to irrational actions that we might later regret. This is our ‘directed’ attention at play, which we employ consciously and with effort, and of which we have limited supplies. When it runs out, we get shi… sorry, annoyed with the world. Luckily, it doesn’t always have to be like this. We can find refuge, both inside and outside of our minds.
Most fundamentally and accessibly, we have internal practices that can help us navigate our day-to-day lives: prayer, meditation, even those more ambiguous ongoing processes of awareness and thankfulness that we call mindfulness. Physical practices —ranging from light stretching through to marathons — are also tools to re-orientate us internally. A combination of these, employed strategically cross the course of a day, can and do help all of us. Theoretically, it may be possible to be constantly mindful, controlled and disciplined enough to carry out our lives in such a way that we can employ such strategies and negotiate challenging situations without adverse mental outcomes: floating through life in a constantly self-regulated state of moderation. I look forward to meeting this person. In reality, these processes aren’t easy, and take practice before they begin to take effect. Sometimes, they aren’t always available, or practical, or possible. Or enough. Hence, we also have to understand and manage out external environments.
Also theoretically: we could live completely within compatible environments, away from stressors, without mental consequence… if only it was that easy, and we didn’t have to study, or work, or sacrifice. While avoidance of challenging situations is necessary at times, for the majority of the time, it surely isn’t a tactic to build a meaningful life around. We accept that we will put ourselves into situations where our mental faculties will be exhausted. At these times, when life becomes too much and we have had enough, we need to find our happy place.
Our happy place doesn’t just meet the condition of being away from the environments that brought us there, where we might then employ our growing arsenal of internal practices to greater effect. These places are not just neutral — as a contrast to the environments that we subject ourselves to for the majority of our waking hours, knowing that we have earned the right to be there — but are actively pleasant, interesting, and restorative.
In technical terms, these environments are fascinating. Unlike directed attention, fascination happens unconsciously, engaging our minds and imaginations effortlessly, allowing for our depleted capacity for concentration, our directed attention, to recharge.
To be fascinated is to be happy, by default, at least temporarily: our minds are occupied with something at the expense of that which would otherwise be there. But whether this momentary distraction has lasting and profound benefits depends on what the source of this fascination is, or the different forms in which fascination is offered to us.
Firstly, because fascinating things are clearly not inherently positive. There is the danger that, in a state of complete exhaustion, we resort to the lowest common denominator of entertainment that engages our negative tendencies. We watch mindless TV, or we get lost on social media, or we engage in un-elevated conversations — sometimes all three at once.
Slightly better are the conventional forms of entertainment we have available to us, and that are generally, if perhaps occasionally tenuously, socially accepted to be positive: insert your preferred examples here. According to multiple learned people, conventional entertainment can be generally classified as hard fascination (it works better if you say it like Tom Gleeson). This means that it is entertaining to the extent that it can completely consume our minds, even removing the need for actual thinking! However, what it doesn’t thus allow for is the opportunity to use this mental respite to think deeply about the problems and predicaments that keep leading us to this place, or more broadly to place our lives and all our seeming problems and predicaments in the ‘grand scheme of things’. That is: to reflect. True mental restoration, a true happy place, allows us to both recover from fatigue whilst reflecting on it.
Firstly: NO I AM NOT SAYING THERE IS ANYTHING WRONG WITH THESE THINGS AND THAT YOU SHOULD ALL GO TO PARKS INSTEAD. Mainly, because I like these things too. And, because then the parks would become too crowded, which would confusingly defeat the point. Also, this is obviously a generalisation: it seems a bit harsh to group crosswords, Sudoku and a good book — which are really just extensions of those internal processes — together with sport and live music. Plus: some entertainment is deliberately constructed to encourage us to reflect on our lives and the world around us. Although: often in a narrow and manipulative way.
Because there are certain environments and entertainment that are sufficiently fascinating to engage us mentally whilst also able to provide a ‘natural’ setting for reflection: soft fascination. Having the capacity to reflect holistically and without any underlying human agendas (even if it is from the smooth tones of David Attenborough playing over a nature doco) can turn what might otherwise be temporary respite from the world into an experience that produces lasting and meaningful changes to our mental framework.
Of course, reflection isn’t always pleasant, and potentially confronting, depending on one’s own life circumstances. Maybe we want to escape such introspection, hence why we consume so much of this entertainment. But if we are to engage in reflection, which we all of course must, then what better, more comforting, and life affirming way to do it then whilst watching ducklings learning to paddle furiously after their momma duck; a black swan freak out passing humans getting a bit to close to her goslings; perhaps even watching normally confined canines going nuts in a fenced off dog park; or, if all else fails, just finding a nice body of water to sit and stare at after a particularly brutal day. All of which you can do in a park. (A good park).
**
Manage to follow that? If not, see my handy shape-and-colour-coded flow chart below. It finishes on an obvious question: why not both? To practice our version of mindfulness, our chosen form of physical re-orientation — even those more moderate forms of entertainment — in an environment that firstly removes the source of exhaustion while providing an opportunity for the simple act of sitting and watching the world on its own terms.
I used to try this — waking up, walking over the road to Queens Gardens, and practicing yoga and meditating in the park. Then I got a bit self conscious about being one of those people, and also realised how much duck poo there was on the grass. So I settled on a short jog, light stretch, and a quiet moment of contemplation… broken only by the decidedly un-restorative and reflective process of getting my phone out to take the photos and videos you see here.
Kaplan, Stephen. 2001. “Meditation, restoration, and the management of mental fatigue.” Environment and Behavior 33 (4): 480-506.
Herzog, Thomas et al. 1997. “Reflection and attentional recovery as distinctive benefits of restorative environments”. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 17 (2), 165-170
Midsplaining 
This is so true, very cleverly midsplained. What a great video. Where on the flow chart is watching great videos of nature?
LikeLike