{"id":10419,"date":"2015-05-06T10:42:04","date_gmt":"2015-05-06T05:12:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/manuscrypts.com\/test\/?p=10419"},"modified":"2021-01-30T12:00:40","modified_gmt":"2021-01-30T06:30:40","slug":"for-the-last-time","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/manuscrypts.com\/test\/2015\/05\/06\/for-the-last-time\/","title":{"rendered":"For the last time"},"content":{"rendered":"

I think this idea first struck me when I was climbing up the steps of the return flight from Leh, 6 years ago. In fact, I remember pausing for just that extra moment before I made my way into the aircraft. For a change, the people behind me weren’t hustling, maybe they felt the mood too. I checked the post I’d written about the trip<\/a>, and sure enough, there was a mention in the last paragraph.<\/p>\n

The idea is that if you were seeing someone\/something for the last time, would the way in which you interact with him\/her\/it change? Would you be nicer, kinder, more caring, more thoughtful? In the instance above, I realised I might be seeing Leh for the last time, and wanted to soak it in just a bit longer.<\/p>\n

Two recent experiences got me thinking about this again. First, I read a \u00a0Boing Boing post<\/a> on stoicism that introduced me to a name for this – negative visualisation. I then recalled that when I read Meditations<\/a>, this was an underlying theme. An understanding and mindfulness\u00a0of the transience of things. To quote from the post,<\/p>\n

I also started making use of the Stoic technique known as\u00a0negative visualization:<\/em>\u00a0I would periodically contemplate the loss of the things and people that mean the most to me. Thus, when parting from a friend, I might make a mental note that this could conceivably be the last time I would see the friend in question. Friendships do end, after all, and people die suddenly. Doing this sort of thing may seem morbid, but the practice of negative visualization is a powerful antidote to a phenomenon that will otherwise deprive us of much of the happiness we could be enjoying: negative visualization prevents us from taking for granted the world around us and the people in it.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The second experience was more personal. D had to make\u00a0a three week trip to the US recently, and in her absence, I realised how much of an ‘easy life’ she was making it for me. From the drudgery of making breakfast to handling chores, I pretty much lost it and tore out whatever little hair I have left! The snapping, the tantrums, the sulks that\u00a0still\u00a0occasionally pop up despite my efforts to control them seemed a gross injustice to her. I realised again that despite watching the self, the tendency to take things and people for granted is not so easily dispelled.\u00a0Mindfulness, dammit! Counter intuitive to the thought below, but I think negative visualisation can most definitely help.<\/p>\n

\"Moment\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I think this idea first struck me when I was climbing up the steps of the return flight from Leh, 6 years ago. In fact, I remember pausing for just that extra moment before I made my way into the aircraft. For a change, the people behind me weren’t hustling, maybe they felt the mood […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1479,412,6268],"tags":[4952,4796,4447,4794,4795],"class_list":["post-10419","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-thoughtstream","category-life","category-self","tag-leh","tag-marcus-aurelius","tag-mindfulness","tag-negative-visualisation","tag-stoicism"],"aioseo_notices":[],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/manuscrypts.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10419","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/manuscrypts.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/manuscrypts.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/manuscrypts.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/manuscrypts.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10419"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/manuscrypts.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10419\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15526,"href":"https:\/\/manuscrypts.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10419\/revisions\/15526"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/manuscrypts.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10419"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/manuscrypts.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10419"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/manuscrypts.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10419"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}