I always beat myself up for putting things off till the next day, then it becomes the next day and before you know it I admit it’s procrastination. When we start to ask the difficult questions: Why? Who am I? What is my purpose?, we eventually store it away in the closet and make sure we stay busy so it’s out of sight out of mind.
We stay busy with work. We stay busy with kids. We stay busy with hobbies. There is nothing wrong with these things, except when we use them to escape from our own journey to self-discovery.
The world is a tense place, now more than ever. Information overload. Social marketing that can trick us into buying anything. Playing on our emotions to consume more and advertising with logical justifications to back up our emotional buying decisions.
I was walking around tense and stressed, and I didn’t even know it. I was rushing through every task and not even enjoying the day. And the more productive I was the more I lied to myself that I was going in the right direction.
I found meditation. I don’t want to sound too hooky and before I did not believe in meditation. I actually found it by accident. I was supposed to meet a friend for a zoom call and I had an hour to kill, so I decided to sit down and rest.
I relaxed my whole body, and something happened that I never expected before. I felt detached and weightless, and calm. My mind was blank. For the next couple of days I wondered if I could replicate the feeling.
Worried that I would lose this, I have been meditating every single day since. I naturally started being more aware of my breathing. I slowed down my breathing throughout the day.
It definitely slowed down things. I would breathe when I eat, when I talk with people, when washing the dishes, and when cooking. Chores became less like a drudgery and I had more energy to do things.
When talking to people I was more apt to listen instead of jumping to give advice. When eating food I could taste and appreciate all the energy that went into the ingredients and the preparation. When washing dishes I noticed how the warm water felt nice on my hands.
I don’t want to be godly or religious, but meditation and breathing changed my life. I feel like it’s a turning point, and I want to keep a journal of the adventure.
