Why meditate?

Anyone can meditate and everyone should meditate. If you can think, you can also meditate.

I started meditation when I was seven years old. I was lucky enough to go to a school where meditation was taught, much like learning times tables. I never saw it as something strange, something reserved for loin-clothed yogis and enlightened hipsters, it was something we all had to do and so we did it, unknowingly, with the openness of children.

I can’t say I had any deep experiences while mediating as a child, but I did awaken a meditation reflex in my brain that kicks in, without fail, automatically, when times get tough. And so I meditated when I was ill, to get through a chronic condition, when my friends or relatives got sick, when I had trouble at work, trouble in love, all sorts of troubles I meditated through. Then I reached a point, shall we say, a numb point, where I had nothing to fight, nothing to get over, and so I became depressed, I needed that something, having grown accustomed to the habit of it.

After a couple of years in this numb state, I realised I needed to consciously commit to meditation, to renew my sense of gratitude and wonder with life. Now I meditate, more or less every day.

I notice, I get more done and feel better in a day which includes meditation, of course, as anyone who meditates regularly will tell you. But my journey to this respect for mediation has taken almost my whole life. The trick is, I think, to take it slowly, treat your relationship with meditation as lifelong, sometimes deep, sometimes light, sometimes passionate and hot, other times considerate and cool.

There is no need to rush with mediation, you may not even enjoy it at all, if so, there are many flavours to try until you find something right for you, something that doesn’t feel like a chore – it should feel like a treat, a guilty pleasure even, something that makes you want to sneak into a private space to eat – something that transports you to a place that you need and want to return to the next day and every day.

Meditation is a kind of thought that is more powerful than all others. Some meditation is the thought of nothing, others focusses us on the body or mind or both in combination. All end up with the same result – a better understanding of who we are and who we all are our place on earth and a feeling of gratitude and happiness equivalent to the enormity of life.