A few weeks back, I was walking home from the tube station thinking about all the ways I can make the kitchen more organized and healthy. And suddenly this powerful eureka thought about mental space stuck with me and I wrote it down immediately as soon as I was home. I will keep the example just limited to the space of the kitchen to not mess it up a lot and easy to explain. It's quite a long one, and you might not relate to it soz.
So I just moved to a new apartment recently, and I have been quite excited about keeping it organized, healthy, and aesthetic at the same time. In the last few years, I have started to follow Satvik Movement and have been verrryyyyy slooowwly trying to adopt the lifestyle. I have done the basic stuff — eliminated meat from my life and reduced dairy. There is another side of it that excites me a lot — which is making your own stuff(coconut milk, peanut butter, etc), cooking in pottery utensils, etc. Basically not buying packaged or processed stuff. On this side, I always blame my surrounding like having a small kitchen, not having a gas stove, weather, industries, climate change, not having enough time, my nutrition plan not being flexible, capitalism, and whatnot. I even considered quitting and selling everything and living in a small village somewhere in the Himalayas so I can finally adopt a natural lifestyle and live life my way. Quite recently, I have started to at least think about the second side of it and find ways to adopt it in my present urban life. For example — Pottery pots aren’t possible for us, but we now have cast iron. I am not there even 1%, I use all sorts of skin care products, and buy all sorts of packaged food but I know now that my targets aren’t unachievable to meet at the moment. But what changed? I believe the answer is simple, I just have more Mental Space now.
Mental Space has now become a very strong concept to me and I use it as a tool to navigate life. There have been days when I haven’t been able to get up from bed at all, have not eaten anything all day, have slept all day and snoozed alarms for hours, fidgeted on my phone for hours, etc. All these situations aren’t ideal and when I was going through them I would keep searching for some motivation that would eventually fix my present self. Now I think about it and it's just obvious to me that I just didn't have the mental space to do anything else at that moment. In the worst moments of my life, I had the least mental space. Mental space can be compared to physical space — as it gets larger, we have more space to accommodate stuff. In the context of mental space, increasing space for me maps to “increasing motivation”.
I am trying to introduce mental space to my meditation routine now. I proactively give a subtle thought during my cleaning practice that the mental space is increasing and I have now more ability to juggle multiple things. It’s too soon to say what the long-term benefits will be, but I am optimistic. I feel empowered, knowing that I’m taking active steps to improve my mental well-being.
As I navigate through the complexities of life, I am learning that I have the capacity to adapt, to change, and most importantly, to create more room in my mind for the things that truly matter. In the end, this is what my journey is about — understanding that the true essence of freedom lies in the expansiveness of one’s mental space. So, here’s to more exploration, more learning, and more mental space. Because when our minds are spacious, we are not just surviving, but truly living.
