CONTEMPLATING ONE’S NAVEL
Currently in my ninth decade of existence, I often refer to myself as “a lonely gopher;” or when asked by friends what I’m up to, I say “contemplating my navel.”
Recently I decided to look into the origin of the latter phrase and found the following:
“The expression traces back to the Hesychasts, a sect of 13th-century Eastern Orthodox monks on Mount Athos, Greece. These mystics fixed their eyes on their navels as an aid to meditation and breath control in an effort to commune with the Divine.”
A further look on the internet yielded the following term of comparison, viz. omphaloskepsis:
“Omphaloskepsis is the practice of navel-gazing as an aid to meditation. The term was coined in 1925 by English writer Aldous Huxley in his novel Those Barren Leaves.”
If any of my readers wish to know how YHB, a scholar at the height of his physical and intellectual powers suffering the slings and arrows of ageism spends his time approaching his eighty-seventh year, let this be their source of knowledge.
MICHAEL SHAPIRO
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