Awareness in the Smallest of Things
After a few weeks of exploring awareness in profound ways—how it relates to identity, change, and self-discipline—it’s worth shifting gears. Let’s take awareness out of the abstract and bring it into something immediate, something pedestrian yet no less profound.
We often associate awareness with deep meditation, life-altering insights, or profound realizations about ourselves. But true awareness is just as much about the smallest, most mundane aspects of life. It’s about noticing what is actually happening, rather than operating on habit or assumption.
The Zooper Dooper Lesson: How Awareness Works
Lately, I’ve found myself enjoying Zooper Doopers—those simple frozen treats that come in long plastic tubes. They’ve become a bit of a summer ritual, and as with anything we repeat often while paying attention, something interesting happened: I started learning.
At first, I simply enjoyed them for what they were: frozen, fruity, refreshing. But over time, I became more aware of subtle variations in the experience. One day, I couldn’t eat my Zooper Dooper right away. It sat out for a few minutes before I got to it, and when I finally had a lick, something was different. It was better. The texture had softened just enough to create the perfect slushy balance of icy and juicy.
That was new information, something I had never considered before. So the next time, I experimented. I let it sit for even longer. The experience improved again. At some point, of course, I’d reach a limit—too much time, and the whole thing would just be liquid. But that wasn’t the point. The point was that something I thought was a fixed experience turned out to have layers. I had discovered a new dimension of enjoyment, simply by paying attention.
What Does This Have to Do with Awareness? This may seem like a silly example, but it perfectly illustrates what happens when we bring awareness to anything in life. We notice something new. We discover choices we didn’t know we had. We refine our experience and deepen our understanding. This is how real learning happens. And this kind of learning can only happen when we step outside of habit and assumption. If I had continued eating Zooper Doopers the way I always had—without paying attention—I never would have known that waiting a few minutes could make such a difference. This is the power of awareness: It reveals things we didn’t even know we didn’t know.
The Beginner’s Mind: Awareness as Learning
One of the easiest ways to recognize when we’re in awareness is noticing when we learn something new. When was the last time you realized something small that changed how you did something? When was the last time you saw a new layer to an old experience? If we are truly operating from awareness, we will always be in a state of discovery.
The monkey mind doesn’t do this. The monkey is busy reacting, repeating, wanting, resisting. It doesn’t learn—at least not in the way we’re talking about. It follows habit and desire, not curiosity. Real learning comes when we are in a state of presence and observation—not trying to force something, not trying to fix something, just seeing what’s there.
This is what Zen calls beginner’s mind—approaching every experience as if for the first time, without the baggage of assumption. And it happens all the time in small ways—if we’re paying attention.
Where Are Your Zooper Dooper Moments? The Zooper Dooper story is just an example. But the same kind of learning can happen anywhere in life. You might notice that if you shift your posture slightly, your breathing becomes easier. You might realize that a small tweak in how you phrase a question changes how people respond to you. You might discover that drinking water at a certain time of day affects your energy levels more than you realized.
The point is awareness brings learning, and learning brings growth.
Take This Into Your Day
So, here’s a challenge: Start noticing when you learn something new. It doesn’t have to be profound. It doesn’t have to be life-changing. It just has to be real. And when it happens, pause for a second and recognize: "Ah, that must have been awareness at work." That moment is the practice. That moment is the shift. That moment is what transforms everything—one tasty treat at a time. 😋
