I’d been feeling like a headless chicken lately, you know? Work piling up, phone buzzing nonstop, brain spinning with to-do lists. Total mess. Then some dude in a yoga forum mentioned Alan Watts – said he explained Zen stuff without all the mystical mumbo-jumbo.
First thing I did? Googled “Alan Watts easy listen” during my lunch break. Found these old recordings where he’s chuckling while dropping truth bombs about how we’re all running on hamster wheels. His voice sounded like a wise grandpa mixed with a stand-up comedian.
The lightbulb moment came when he said:
- Stop treating life like it’s a damn mission to complete
- You’re not a separate thing observing the world – you ARE the world
- Busyness is just mental diarrhea
Okay, fine theory Alan – but my inbox had 127 unread messages. How’s that help? So I tried his “folding towels meditation” trick next morning. Mind you, I was sprinting around grabbing coffee while doing this. He says focus 100% on whatever dumb thing you’re doing. So I stared at that towel crease like it held nuclear codes.
Complete fail at first. Brain kept hijacking me: “Did I pay the gas bill?” “Meeting at 11!” But after three days of violently refocusing on towel-folding, something weird happened. For like 8 seconds straight, the mental noise shut up. Just me and dumb cotton squares. Felt like my shoulders dropped two inches.
That’s when I got his main point – it’s not about escaping busyness. It’s about not letting busyness own you. Now when emails avalanche, I pick one physical thing to hyper-focus on first: feeling keyboard keys under fingers, tasting coffee bitterness, listening to my own damn breath. Sounds silly but those 10-second reality checks keep me from spiraling.
Biggest win? Yesterday I caught myself stressing over traffic. Normally I’d rage-honk. Instead I thought “Huh. Alan Watts would laugh at me white-knuckling a steering wheel like it matters.” Unclenched my jaw. Turned up terrible radio music. The jerk who cut me off suddenly seemed less personal. Weirdly powerful.
Not saying I’m some zen master now. Still check emails at 11pm. But Alan’s sneaky – his ideas stuck in my brain like chewing gum. When overwhelm hits, I hear that British chuckle reminding me: “You’re not solving a puzzle, you’re just being human.” And somehow that makes folding laundry feel less like prison.
