Tragic outcomes of inadvertentness

Posted on October 18, 2013

By Gary Jaffer

I was shocked a week or so ago to learn of the child that had been left in a car all day after the father “forgot” to drop it off at a child care facility. My heart went out to the father, what a terrible thing with which to live. At the time both TV and newspaper reports were quoting similar occurrences in Australia and overseas, with similar outcomes. Then, just today, I read a report of a mother running late for a doctor appointment, inadvertently left her child in the capsule in the car for about an hour – thankfully the child was rescued, but unfortunately the mother was charged and fined.

What is happening here? There seems to be so much demand around us today – all these electronic devices that are meant to make life easier seem to be demanding attention, our work, pressures at home and our general busyness all just seem to take up so much of our head time. The question is; “If we are becoming so pre-occupied with our thoughts that we are missing what truly must be important stuff, then what else are we missing, that is important too, but does not carry the same tragic outcome?”

If ever there was an example for the need to cultivate mindfulness then these two recent events must surely be the ones.

We are so familiar with the term “be mindful” yet we don’t realise that it actually needs to be cultivated, practiced and quite purposeful, for it to have any meaning or effect. In the past few months as I have moved around some business circles and talked about mindfulness, I have regularly got that all knowing look, the one that says, “yeah, that stuff sounds interesting but is a bit hokey pokey and cosmic and not really suited to the general work environment and certainly not here.” Yet, here, in the last couple of weeks, we have seen dramatic and tragic results of inadvertentness. Don’t get me wrong, there is no blame or judgment here, I believe this sort of thing can happen to most people and in fact does, but not with the same tragedy. I got out of the car at the supermarket the other day, deep in thought, and got all the way into the shopping centre before I remembered I had left my shopping bags in the boot of the car – same inadvertentness, nowhere near the same degree of outcome.

Practicing mindfulness is for everybody! It is not something to be shrugged off as something a bit “out there” or “eastern” but something that is incredibly useful in our everyday living. It improves productivity at work and at home, it can reduce stress, increase memory and improve relationships just to name a few benefits. The best part is that it can take just a few minutes of practice every day and some exercises can be done as you go about your normal activities.

What part of your life are you inadvertently missing?