Why Bother with Meditation?

Attention in a Distracted Age

Our habits of constantly multi-tasking and checking our devices repeatedly erode sustained attention, making it a vanishing art.

Ever had that moment where you were reading an email and had no idea what it meant, or watching your favourite show but being zoned out? Or that familiar feeling where your child has been telling you about the exciting thing that happened at school today and you were miles away? Yes, those are the very instances we're talking about here.

So imagine actually being engaged and present for all of these enjoyable moments of life without letting other things interfere — important though they may be. Meditation reduces mind-wandering and can even strengthen the 'muscle' required to pay attention. It is not "slowing down" or a spiritual escape but training attention to stay on task and be fully present with experience.

Emotions and Suffering

Hot anger swelling up inside you such that everything else is consumed by it. Shame so deep that you want to vanish into oblivion. Heartbreak so crushing that you can't breathe, you feel like you're suffocating and 'know' that you could never love the same way again. Anxiety so acute it's like a vice gripping your heart and you're completely immobilised.

If any of these sound familiar, then meditation can definitely help. Not that any of these are bad in and of themselves. Problems occur when they linger longer than is helpful — when they catch you in the middle of the day and transport you to another place where you'd rather not go right then.

Most of these emotions are transient — they only persist when we keep fuelling them with thoughts without knowing that we are thinking. Meditation practices can begin to interrupt this inner commentary, so you feel the raw emotion briefly instead of being engulfed in a long, juicy story about it.

Jon Kabat-Zinn explains you cannot "sweep thoughts away"; instead you recognize you are not your thoughts, and let them self-liberate like soap bubbles in awareness.

Compassion and Character

Over time, meditation practice tends to make people less self-focused and more empathic and service-oriented, with less "I, me, mine" driving behaviour.

You know how there's that one person at work everyone goes to when they need help? Or that aunt who makes you feel heard and seen, no matter the problem? Or that friend who always makes time to help you putting aside their own agenda? Ever been envious of them? Ever wanted to be a little more like them?

Meditation offers that opportunity. Just like watering a plant and watching it grow, practising love, kindness and compassion helps us connect with our innate well-being and then radiate it outwards. And the day comes when you surprise yourself by being more like the people you admire. Yes, admire, not envy.

Wisdom and Insight

That feeling you get when you want to dig in your heels and hold on to your perspective? The one that's got you gritting your teeth and clenching your fists? Or the one where you're silently rolling your eyes, incredulous at how 'stupid' other people can be? Or the voice that says once X is done, you will finally be able to rest?

Notice what's common to all these? The isolation.

They're all focussed on the 'me' that we hold so dearly. When all of our attention is on being right, on getting our way, on gaining control over our environment, it disconnects us from the people around us. They become the enemy standing between us and happiness. With wisdom practices, we begin to loosen this tight grip on our fixed identity. We stop believing so much in labels that we've used to define ourselves: 'I'm lazy', 'I'll never learn', 'I'll always be like this'… these begin to fade slowly and we're born anew. As the labels loosen their grip, there's more room to simply be. And that, quietly, is the beginning of freedom.