Mindfulness

The Art of Appreciating What's Right in Front of You

I’m trying to be more mindful, and more focused. I don’t have a problem focusing when I’m writing, or dreaming up comedy routines. When things are going particularly well, I enter what almost seems like a dream state, and the words just flow out of me. They’re not necessarily the best words, and my dreamy outpourings often need a lot of work before they’re worthy of sharing with anyone. But that level of focus is a gift, and I generally ride it for as long as it lasts (generally not more than a few hours).

For comedy, most of my best ideas don’t come when I’m poised at the computer, ready to “write jokes.” They come when I’m wandering the streets, or walking in the park, or on the exercise bike, or trying to ignore the boring parts of a Zoom meeting. I also get ideas for comedy during my team meetings at work, where my colleagues are subjected to a barrage of “witty” comments, some of which elicit more groaning than laughing.

But all of the above is work of a sort. Where I need to be more mindful is in everyday life – not losing my keys, not misplacing my passwords so I have to change them every time I go to a protected website, keeping up with paperwork on health care and expense reimbursements, holding onto meaningful items, finding fun photographs when I need them, locating the email address of an old friend, or listening carefully to others instead of simultaneously running a separate conversation with myself in my head.

I have made efforts to be more mindful in my everyday life from time to time, but only very recently have I noticed a change. I picked up a book by Thich Nhat Hanh, the late Vietnamese spiritual leader and peace activist, at my local bookstore. There are many choices. Thich Nhat Hanh has a series of small, pocket-sized books on topics like “How to Love,” “How to Fight,” “How to Relax,” “How to Connect,” and so forth. And these are just a handful of the 100 or so books he wrote. All that productivity makes a person wonder whether he just needed to chill a bit more.

I chose “How to Focus,” and it has indeed helped me to be more mindful, although it is early days. On the page his words almost seem naively optimistic, but practicing what he suggests definitely makes a difference in one’s awareness of one’s surroundings and one’s appreciation of life in all its seemingly mundane aspects.

Much of the focus is on breathing, as well as clearing one’s mind of stray thoughts and worries and trying to concentrate on what’s happening right now, right in front of you. I did this today on my walk back and forth to the local farmer’s market, walking a mile or so round trip up Broadway and back through Riverside Park.

One of the first things I noticed is that the block of West 109th between Broadway and Riverside Drive is called Thich Nhat Hanh Way. I must have passed that block hundreds of times. At most I may have thought to myself “who is that?,” but I never paid it much mind. Most of the time I would walk by listening to music, or thinking random thoughts, or worrying about a deadline, or looking at the sidewalk six or eight feet in front of me. But now that I’m reading one of his books, it obviously has more significance. And the obvious question is why there?

Well, because Thich Nhat Hanh lived on West 109th Street in Manhattan in the 1960s when he was studying Buddhism at Union Theological Seminary and Columbia, after being expelled from Vietnam for opposing the war. Martin Luther King, Jr. nominated Thich Nhat Hanh for a Nobel Peace Prize for his work. The street was named after Thich Nhat Hanh just last year, on April 11, 2025.

And I only made the connection because I took his advice and walked uptown calmly, conscious of my breath, looking around me instead of studying the sidewalk. Mindfulness.

Paying attention to one’s surroundings in New York can be particularly rewarding. One day wandering through Harlem I stumbled on the statue of Harriet Tubman at the crossroads of West 122nd Street, St. Nicholas Avenue, and Frederick Douglass Boulevard. I captured the QR code and listened to a short recorded message about Harriet Tubman’s life.

Walking further I saw streets dedicated to the Black Panthers and Elijah Muhammad – side streets, not like the major boulevards or major arteries named after Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, Jr, or the aforementioned Frederick Douglass Boulevard.

Most importantly, as I wandered downtown and eastward I entered Central Park through “The Gate of the Exonerated.” It is dedicated to the Central Park Five, who were wrongly accused of a rape and murder of a jogger in Central Park and spent thirteen years in prison as a result. It was named in 2022, the first gate (basically an entrance) to the park to be named since 1862. As noted on the official New York City Parks Department website entry on The Gate of the Exonerated, it was the product of an “extensive, in-depth dialogue among the Harlem community and a response to their desire for healing and belonging in the aftermath of the case and its impact on Black and Latino New Yorkers.” The site further notes that, unfortunately, the Exonerated Five are not alone, except insofar as that their unjust convictions were overturned:

“The experience of the Exonerated five and their families was not exceptional. It fits a historical pattern of unjust arrests and wrongful convictions of Black and Latino people in the United States. The Gate of the Exonerated means to shed light on the prejudice, hatred, and wrongful incarcerations that are a product of inequities inherent in the justice systems, and ultimately to honor all those affected by the inequities of the system.”

The New York City subway is also filled with interesting artifacts that a person can easily miss. I was waiting on the platform at 125th street that serves the number 2 and 3 express lines, occupied with my phone and looking up the track to see if the train was coming in, when I turned around and saw a series of mosaics by the famed Harlem artist Faith Ringgold called “Flying Home: Harlem Heroes and Heroines (Uptown and Downtown. The official description does a good job of describing the depth and breadth of the piece:

“Flying Home” is a mosaic mural that honors Harlem notables and makes them fly. The mural on one platform depicts performers, painters, and sports figures like Dinah Washington, Sugar Ray Robinson, and Josephine Baker. The opposite platform shows leaders like Malcolm X and writer Zora Neale Hurston, brought to life in mosaics that recall the cultural zenith of Harlem. The title is based on a Lionel Hampton song which Faith Ringgold heard as a child. The artist sought to capture its spirit in this work, which she expressed by posing the figures as if they were in flight. “I love every one of these people,” Ringgold says, “I wanted to share those memories, to give the community - and others just passing through - a glimpse of all the wonderful people who were part of Harlem. I wanted them to realize what Harlem has produced and inspired.”

Lots to see. But it doesn’t have to prompt reflection on historical developments, or works of art, or books. It can be the first flowers of spring, or the facade of a building I haven’t focused on before. Or . . a store I’ve always meant to shop in. A spiritual practice leading back to good old fashioned materialism — of a strictly mindful variety.