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An orange a day keeps the doctor away*

For most people, it’s as if someone has the remote control for your life and they’ve got their thumb permanently on the fast-forward button. Yes, you really have got too many things to do and not enough time to do them so there’s no point papering over exhaustion with positive thinking.

‘Positive psychology’ however, well that’s a different matter. Because nestled within the ‘science’ lies mindfulness, which I describe as the awareness of being aware.

When you tilt towards the good you’re not denying or resisting the bad. You’re merely acknowledging and savouring the good. You’re learning to be aware of the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, that there is oodles of good stuff out there and you’re going to damn well spot it and savour it. The opportunities for taking in the good are multitudinal, but while the bad is heralded with a trumpet fanfare, the good is often silently sitting at the back of your awareness.

Mindfulness is less about donning rose-tinted specs and more about cleaning the s”!# off your current ones. Plus, by taking in the good, you learn to feel a whole lot better, more vital, and are therefore better able to deal with the bad.

The best thing about mindfulness is that after a while you realise it’s all transient. And by ‘it’ I mean ‘absolutely everything’. So don’t feel compelled to grab onto the good moments and snuggle your face into them, crying your heart out when they disappear. There is more good on the way. Good is in every moment.

Which brings me to the title of this blog. A while back I learned that sales of oranges are falling because busy folk just having got time to peel them (the modern capitalist world now provides pre-peeled oranges, but that’s cheating).

So, true to the ‘Art of Brill’ ethos, I decided to go swim the populist tide and have an orange a day, sometimes, if the devil’s in me, I sneak two. I like oranges because they’re so varied. Yes, they’re all orange and round, but you’d be amazed at how individual they are once you notice. We have a fruit bowl so generally I have a choice. I might pick one or two up, testing their weight and sphericity. Once chosen, I’m careful to smell it, allowing its bittersweet aroma to waft around. I notice whether it’s a smoothie or has dimples and I now know that this affects its flavour. My thumb has evolved to be expert at breaking the seal of the skin, releasing the juiciness of the smell and starting my taste buds jangling. Then I have a bit of fun peeling its layers. While peeling I imagine the tree it came from and all the sunshine it’s absorbed, and the journey it’s taken to get to my kitchen. And then it’s revealed, in all its glory – I’m the first one to see it naked! Another smell, this time much more zesty, my taste buds now properly excited in anticipation – and then the first segment is nommed, vitamin C exploding in my mouth.

Nobody else in my family eats oranges. Too much trouble apparently?

If only they knew?

Andy

(* Andy hasn’t had a day off work in 16 years)