When I was in the Marine Corps, “Stay alert!” and “Be aware of your surroundings.” were pretty common phrases. Many of my fellow Marines and I would use “alert” and “aware” interchangeably and I know the same is often true in the civilian world. While these words get along most of the time, there is sometimes a bit of a brawl that can happen within each of us depending on how we use them and when.
To break this down, I’m going to turn inward rather than calling upon my good friends Merriam, Webster, and Oxford. While they can be quite useful, this is less of a dictionary disagreement than it is a philosophical appreciation of the distinction between the aware and alert. To me and in the context of mindfulness, awareness is being conscious of thoughts and emotions, people and planet, and the general existence of things. Alertness is more about the reactive element that can occur when stimuli is introduced.
Let’s take a deeper look and have a bit of fun, exploring this through metaphorical story time…
* * Cue the lights! * *
Once upon a present time, in Mindfultopia, live princesses Awareness and Alertness. The two princesses get along quite nicely most of the time. They both love to throw parties and Princess Alertness is great at getting things started. Princess Awareness is always sure to take the lead on hosting though. If Alertness stays in charge too long, the parties get rather chaotic, with the guests being on edge the entire time. Aside from the intentional party planning, the princesses don’t interact much and have different groups of friends.
Awareness has a dear friend named Judgement, but I don’t advise we let them hang out without proper supervision. They definitely have a great deal to learn from one another, but Judgement tends to get in Awareness’s way when they get together. Awareness is quite…aware of this, but knows if she puts Judgement in the “enemy” category, that he will likely show up in disguise at one of the parties. This would be bad, not only for Princess Awareness, but also her sister. You see, Princess Alertness and Judgement don’t get along at all.
Alertness is so focused on being…alert, that she never even sees Judgement, with or without his disguise. This infuriates Judgement, which would cause quite the uproar at a party. Alertness would storm off and Judgement would go into hiding, leaving Princess Awareness on her own to clean up the mess, if she could even be found…
* * To be continued… * *
