The topic for our first Tuesday after the summer break was a Ten Percent Happier blog post titled Enjoy the View - Not the Commentary. In it, psychologist Arnie Kozak looked at how our internal storytelling takes over or masks our experience. For example:

Our lives are almost always accompanied by a running commentary. Our minds are continually spinning out opinions about every experience as it happens, so much so that the opinions seem to be part of the present moment, unlike excursions in the future (like anticipation) or the past (like regret). Often the running commentary is so pervasive and ever-present that we typically do not notice it at all. It fades into the background, part of the warp and woof of our daily lives.

We talked about noticing the commentary, when it stops in moments of awe and tenderness, how it is so pervasive that it seems to be part of the experience instead of something separate from it, and why the body offers one path to dialing down the incessant chatter.