Musings on Meditation

Anyone else drifting through the most trying seasons of your life?  Yeah, I see you.  Well, technically I don’t see you, me, or an end in sight through this dense fog of life, but you know what I mean.  Perhaps drifting is too docile a term, it’s more like being a pinball ricocheted from one painful experience to the next.  All this being said, I’ve come to discuss the merits of meditation and how strife has taught me how to be still.

I am someone who cannot slow down.  I try, but sitting down for a movie inevitably includes getting up to make snacks, wash dishes, fold clothes or multitask while “relaxing.”  I’m not sure if it is the guilty Catholic household I grew up in where laying around was considered being lazy, but relaxing with me is not usually relaxing for the people around me.  On the job, I always prided myself on working harder than what I was paid for or even asked to do.  Doing more to advance the company than even the owner was what I did.  But you know how that usually works out (cue the shitty boss to take advantage then pillage you.) How to Handle an Awful Boss: Tricks to Avoid Engaging | Psychology Today.

Recently, I had a forced relaxation imposed on me involving that ‘movement from one painful experience to the next thing’ I alluded to.  At first, this time at home involved all of the beneficial things I could do for the household.  Cleaning, cooking, purging, organizing, donating, filing, and the like made my organized home even tidier.  Tasks like shopping around insurances and medical plans were ticked off my to-do list on the daily.  Really old tasks like checking on billing questions and clothes that needed dry-cleaning from years back were taken care of.  And for good measure and without hesitation I threw away about 10 years’ worth of memories, baggage really. I sat for about 10 seconds to ponder what I’d tossed, then promptly got back to work.

I started cooking meals from scratch.  And when “from scratch” involved adding things from jars to the recipes, I decided to make the jars contents from actual scratch too.  Homemade taco seasoning, pickled veggies, and seasonings organized from A to Z, check, check, check. We got rid of sugar from our diets and so now I had to come up with healthy snacks and desserts, hence more time spent researching and preparing. I decided my beautiful meals needed an even cleaner presentation area, so I removed every single item from my cupboards and scrubbed them shiny.  And even after all of that, I couldn’t take a break.

I started lifting weights because problems plus flabby arms are too much for anyone to bear.  I began consciously walking more to up my step numbers which meant walking around in circles a lot.  And I did all this while I was supposed to be home resting for eight weeks from emergency surgery.  The ridiculousness of this made me stop one day and just try with all of my might to be still.  I tried, but you know what happened then?  You start recounting all the painful experiences that got you to this point.  As a coping mechanism, the body craves activity to keep the mind from remembering.  So outside I went, in search of more work.

I headed out back to garden, plant, prune, and water with the same vigor I had shown the inside of the home. One day as I was refilling the birdbath, stillness came to me.  The sun shone down, and I dared squint back at it and for a moment my mind was quiet. I stood there momentarily stopped, frozen in time, with my only goal to feel the sun, hear the birds and deeply sense the surroundings.  I felt so accomplished to be able to be in that moment.  I let the moment slip into a minute but for me it felt like a big, blissful eternity of nothingness running through my head.

I have tried meditation so many times before, always feeling like an inept idiot who couldn’t lock in on a present mind. 35 Fun Facts About Meditation That Will Surprise You I tried meditating with other people, feeling so envious at their state of relaxation and how oblivious they were to me while I sat and stared at them wondering what to do next.  But after my moment in nature, I decided to do what everyone does when questioning anything, I Googled.  After about a10 second investment of my time searching Meditation, I luckily came across The Daily Calm.  Calm – The #1 App for Meditation and Sleep

The Daily Calm features a very serene sounding woman talking you through 10 minutes of meditation.  There is a cost for the app, but YouTube brings these segments to you for free.  What I didn’t realize about meditation is that by drawing attention to your surroundings and the very moment you are in, you don’t really have the ability to dually focus on your problems.  I’m sure that’s the whole point of meditating but I just never realized my brain would go along.  While it is not an easy thing to do; just turn off the noise going on inside your head, it is quite nice and achievable to follow a voice guiding you to draw focus to your different body parts and to pay attention to your breathing.  I feel so relaxed, actually really relaxed, after a 10 minute meditation session.  I’m a constant thinker so to be relieved of the minutia of life for just a few minutes each day has been a game changer.

I’m still working on making it through an entire movie without getting up to do chores, which may not ever change.  But when I feel overwhelmed by the here and now of things, I am learning to pay attention to my breathing, and to calm my worries knowing I have this new tool to center myself.  I actually look forward to this small slice of time I have carved out daily.  For anyone who is not feeling like their best self right now, I recommend trying meditation as a coping tool.  And if you are on top of the world and all is good, I also recommend meditation.  For when life cycles, and it will, it is beneficial to be able to sit with oneself during all of life’s seasons.

Photos courtesy of Daily Calm Facebook page and Deposit Photos