The Miseducation on Meditation
Illustration by Kiera Sainsbury
This one may be a bit of a “hear me out.”
Before anything else, I’m going to say something that might hurt your feelings: it’s that damn phone.
Truly though, I feel it is common knowledge these days that our addictions to our phones may be ruining our lives, and I say that as an addict myself. Yet, every time I have even a split second of downtime, any time there is a lull in a conversation, or even whenever my laptop screen in front of me is still too boring, I whip out my phone.
For what, exactly? Not sure. I check Instagram, TikTok, and any text messages I may have gotten since I last checked 5 minutes ago. 98% of the time there is nothing that needs urgent checking. This is precisely the reason why I believe we should all start meditating.
I want to clarify that meditation is an age-old practice across many different cultures, and I am in no way claiming to be an expert on its intricacies. If you’re looking for an in-depth guide on how to open your third eye and align any and all chakras, please ask a seasoned professional. What I mean in this case when I say “meditation” is to detox from our devices.
I understand why meditation has a bad reputation. For those of us who are addicted to our phones, it seems hard to imagine a world in which free time wouldn’t be spent scrolling. Even if you aren’t addicted to your phone and are completely fine with doing other things, you might find sitting with yourself in silence incredibly tedious. I know, because I used to have the same attitude. Once, in high school, we had to take a yoga class during gym. At the end, the instructor said 30 minutes would be dedicated to sitting on our mats in complete silence and meditating. Even at 14 years old, this concept seemed pointless. To add insult to injury, the gym teacher refused to let us nap during this time as “she would know.” I found myself counting the tedious minutes before I eventually drifted into some sort of eyes-open daydream about meeting my celebrity crush at the time. From that day on, I told myself that meditation was completely useless. Sitting in silence and thinking didn’t make my Tuesday any better then, why would it now?
In TikTok’s never ending quest to force new lifestyles into everyone’s home, a particularly stressful fall semester wound me up on the meditation side of the app. At first, I dismissed it: “Pfft yeah. That stuff takes years of effort just for a tiny bit of progress.” Bear in mind I said this to myself while laying in bed, curtains closed, at 2 pm on a Saturday. So, I eventually figured I had nothing to lose. Meditating was hardly going to make my year worse. I began doing as the all-knowing geniuses on TikTok prescribed, being to sit down for 5 minutes before you go to bed each night and think about all of the things in your life that you are grateful for. On the first night, I was a little skeptical and listed all of the usual: loved ones, experiences, et cetera. The second night, I forced myself to think of an entirely new list with none of the same things from the night before. Same for the third night. And the fourth.
Soon, I found myself applauding my own creativity for coming up with unique lists of things to be grateful for. I started to notice things I didn’t even know I was grateful for: my headphones because they play my favourite music and keep my ears warm from the Kingston wind. Windows, because they let the sun pour into my room on summer days and provide the patter of the rain when I’m falling asleep at night. My platform Doc Martens, for being scary enough to ward off middle-aged men at the bar, but also being cool enough to attract the right kind of fashion lovers. I grew to like this practice the more and more I did it, and began to look forward to it every day before I went to bed. 5 minutes turned into 10. 10 turned into 15. 15 turned into 30. Day by day, I could feel myself growing into my own mind. I was comfortable sitting in silence with my thoughts, enough to not even notice the time passing by. I began to think of things I want to be grateful for in the future, and how I can aspire to that. It really began to open up my entire mindset.
So, why is this important? Unfortunately, the answer’s really stupid: it just is. Maybe this form of mediation didn’t radically change me into a new person like the tabloids want you to believe, but it certainly gave me a new perspective. It helped me to take time away from distractions and look closely at the details of my life in a more positive light for once. Aside from all of that, it helped me sleep a lot better, too. Usually, time spent lying in bed before I went to sleep was reserved for remembering embarrassing things I’d done years ago or stressing about how I was going to pay a mortgage one day, a ridiculous worry considering I’m a 20-year-old university student. But now, I feel a much more powerful sense of calm about everything. Sitting in silence away from distractions helped me realize that sometimes it just isn’t that serious and always works out. What “it” is, I don’t know specifically – that’s really for you to decide. Thus, my advice is: try meditation, just once. Just for 5 minutes, list 10 things in your life that you’re grateful for, and watch how you can become a more authentic version of yourself. And if it truly doesn’t work, I will allow you to heckle me in the street about it. It’s fine, I’ll just go home and meditate about how grateful I am to get attention from strangers.