I had forgotten to delete my Headspace app from my phone. I just got a notification to "Do a quick mental pushup to flex your mindfulness muscle."
I very mindfully, thoughtfully, and with deliberate intent deleted the app. That isn't the place from which I come or the place I want to go with meditation. See? I'm learning!
I can set a timer for however long I want to meditate (usually ten minutes), close my eyes, and focus on my breathing. It's not that I am sorry for learning how to meditate on the app. I really did learn. But the direction the marketers are going with it ain't me, ain't what I want out of it, and I think are kinda contrary to the point.
Heh, then again, I do yoga to be physically flexible and fluidly mobile, which kinda wasn't the original point. So... inconsistent there.
So, here's where I laugh. What if taking a Daily Walk, something that is certainly a part of my culture, but not some Big Thing for Personal Development, was seen by another culture as Some Big Exotic Thing To Do for Personal Development?
Like aliens who saw humans doing it and figured that's where our Space Orc qualities came from? Would there be Teachers and Traditions around that damn half-hour walk? Arguments about Original Intent? Podcasts about How Humans Take a Walk? Special gear marketed for it? Arguments about how 10,000 steps was some sort of Spiritual Advancement?*
(Yeah, I know, that stuff already exists, but imagine it was from a Not-Human culture, if you get me, and how the Aliens might get it wrong in embarrassing and kinda cringy ways).
*10,000 steps was a Japanese marketing scheme to sell pedometers in the 1960s, and again in the US and Europe the 2000s. Sure, sure, if you want to use it as a way to keep yourself mobile and it works for you (it does me) then that's fine, but there's nothing magic about it.