I hadn’t intended to write anything to coincide with this year’s Mental Health Awareness Week – in my view, we should be able and willing to talk about mental health any time we want and not need a special week for it.
But I changed my mind. This morning I went for my regular early dip in the sea, which most of the time I do on my own. But today was different, as I swam with a friend who went in for the first time: I ‘popped his cherry’ – his words, not mine!
And watching his experience made me reflect and remind myself how important the benefits are for me.
The other morning I did something unusual. I left the house to walk to the train station without putting in my earphones.
For me, this is rare. My normal routine has me loading up a podcast within seconds of shutting the front door. I then listen to that for the first 30-odd minutes of my commute, before switching to music for the remainder.
On this particular day I had just minutes to reach the station, so decided not to plug in immediately. When I arrived, my rush was in vain: “Train cancelled”.
So I did something different. I sat on a bench on the platform and just listened without any other distraction. It’s no exaggeration to say it was a revelation.
Rather than the insulated world I’m used to, I truly stopped and paid attention to the world around me.
And the predominant sound I heard was the song of four or five different types of bird, beautifully chirruping and tweeting in harmony.
There was also the low murmur of the ticket attendant talking to a customer and the occasional beep of an electronic sensor, but I was overwhelmingly struck by the serenity and beauty of it all.
It’s so easy to stick your headphones on and block out the world around you – something many, if not most, of us are guilty of.
But changing routine occasionally and ‘noticing’ the world around us is something we should all do.
