“Active Bodies, Quiet Minds”

You will find those words displayed in every H-Wise yoga studio you enter. I was not the first to come up with the phrase, but I was the first to register the trademark. For good measure, I also trademarked busy bodies, still minds; working bodies, resting minds; and several combinations of all three, both singular and plural.

Branding. What a marvelous offspring of modern media. A hundred years ago, the concept would have been unimaginable––that the name or phrase attached to an item would be worth much more than the item itself. People don’t buy Nike shoes. They buy a Swoosh with a mediocre bit of footwear attached to it.

Sorry, I’m rambling. Life has become so hectic, I sometimes forget why I’m saying and doing the things I say and do. My intentions were always noble; I hope they still are. After burning myself out in the world of sales, I found healing through yoga and meditation. I became such a dedicated student of these practices, I was compelled to teach others what I’d learned.

I began hosting classes at a local studio. They filled up. I began live streaming my classes. I blew up. Social media––share, share, share alike––suddenly I was verging on ten million Instagram followers. Those aren’t exactly Swifty numbers, but when you surpass the million followers mark, you get dragged along by the social media bandwagon. People start following you without knowing who or what you are. My biggest jump in followers happened the day some creepy manfluencer placed me lucky seven on his Top 10 Celebrity Butts list. That was my first clue that the trajectory of my career may be veering an unhealthy direction.

I’ve been thinking a lot about enlightenment. Many of my fans consider me enlightened. Perhaps I understand a few things the average person does not, but I’m no Maharaj-ji. It seems to me, the most enlightened human in the world is likely someone you’ve never heard about.

An enlightened person would care nothing for views, shares, or likes. She would not be satisfied by a world of screens.

It’s my birthday today. If you didn’t know this, you’re not one of my now fifty million social media followers, nor one of the thousand who attended my thirty-seventh birthday celebration earlier tonight, though I confess, I can only bring to mind the names of a few dozen of the guests. My memory for such things fails me these days. It isn’t early senility (I pray it isn’t); it’s the fragmentation of attention––that insidious syndrome afflicting most of us in the West.

You would think one such as me, having combed the depths of mindfulness, would be immune to the syndrome, but mindfulness is slow to attain and difficult to hold. Divert your attention for even a moment––check your email, add a reminder to your task list right now! before you forget, clear the swarm of alerts from your phone––and mindfulness slips away like a fish from the angler’s hand.

Through closed eyes, I spy my phone––light and dim, light and dim. Silent to the ears, not the mind, each LED burst is another Instagram tag from someone I do not know, a million or more HBD gifs and memes tapping my brain, diverting my attention from the breath.

I should have turned the damned thing off. At the end of a long day like this one, the last thing I need is more stimulation. I snatch the phone from the side table, intending to power it down, but my thumb lands on the most recent alert; the phone unlocks, and alive comes that cunning app. Upper right, the small digital heart pulsing with enough dopamine to power a city.

Before putting the thing to sleep, I quickly scan my direct messages, a mistake, as a momentary glance tells me the inbox is full of junk, with one exception. Four down is a message from my assistant, Nancy. God bless that woman; I couldn’t survive without her. Among other things, she oversees my social media accounts. Next time I see her, I should hand the phone over and implore her to never give it back.

I thumb Nancy’s message: Happy Birthday, Hillary! Thought you’d love to see this.

A photo, forwarded through Nancy from a name I don’t recognize. The backdrop is exotic––khaki soil, spindly trees––Africa. The picture’s centerpiece is a large gray pipe sprouting from the dust, terminating in a cockeyed box with a handle. A well. Right of the well is an African girl, early teens by her look, executing a commendable standing tree pose.

In my view, there are two types of smiles––the kind you make happen, and the kind that happen to you. The second sort you rarely see. The teen in this photo bears the rare one. I study her image for a long time before noticing a familiar logo on the shoulder of the top she wears. It’s mine. She’s wearing my brand. I check below and find a message:

Dear Ms. Hilary Wiseman, Happy Birthday from Sierra Leone! Our forever gratitude to you for our new well. God Bless, Mamboma village.

Tears wet my lips. I scarcely recall a conversation with Nancy, who also oversees the H-Wise Charities Foundation, about partnering to fund new wells in Africa. I don’t know where my attention was at the time, but it wasn’t on wells or water or Africa. I’m sure I gave her a terse response equating to ‘fine, whatever, okay’, and likely came across as annoyed.

I’m arrested by the image of this radiant girl wearing my brand, heaping misdirected gratitude upon me. How should I feel? Embarrassment over my lack of attention to the charity that bears my name? Pride over this good thing my hard work has created? I feel neither.

It starts with a smile––that rarest of rare, happens to you smile––and grows into laughter. Life is miracle after miracle, and we’ve grown numb to it. The earth, our home, is not stationary; it moves at breathtaking speed, collecting gifted energy from the sun, and we are here, capable of gifting ourselves, working miracles.

Alone in my room, I laugh like a fool. Like a child.