Nothing Better to Do

“But you have nothing better to do with your time than harass us, do you? Go back to ruling the universe from Mount Olympus or whatever else it is you mongrels do.” —Claudia Gray.

When it comes time to meditate, I’m only human. I’ll find that after a day of dealing with people who have seemingly nothing better to do that screw with me, or too much time overthinking or overworking, my brain speed up and I start thinking of the things that finally, out of desperation, have led me to the point the idea pops into my head, “Oh, maybe it’s that time.”

When I’m frustrated, this can lead to sadness or anger. I can mope, complain, talk up the negative, which shifts my actions to negative and harmful behavior. I can find myself being hyper sensitive, saying shitty and needlessly defensive things, arguing back when people get shitty with me, nagging or lecturing a friend or family member. I really think society has led some of us to genuinely not even want to feel better. All this insanity has come to be considered normal by the world and for brief moments, I believe this as well.

When I’m in a fucked up mood and I sit down and close my eyes to meditate, I’m skeptical. To be honest, about 10% of the time I don’t want to do it and still to this day I can convince myself that either I can’t do it, I don’t want to feel better, or it won’t work anyway. Although, I end up not-meditating or meditating less than 20 minutes only about 1% of the time or less. I always at least give it a shot when I say to myself, “What the hell? I have nothing better to do.”

The irony is, no matter what chaos is around me, I literally have nothing better to do because meditation will calm the very chaos that is preventing me from meditating, if that makes sense. It’s a brain trick. Even a body trick.

Those four days of learning TM will let you see that you can at least try to find a time and a place to meditate and escape and stop the chaos you think is preventing you from meditating. You might even be lucky enough to realize that you can close your eyes right in the middle of the chaos. After 10, 15, 20 minutes, you come out of your meditation and the chaos is so much less destructive to you and so much less apparent.

While meditating amidst police sirens, dogs barking, children screaming, TV blaring, the sounds of a busy airplane or bus or subway car… these “distractions” from life will still be there. But while meditating, the mantra if more preferable, so just let it go, float around, recognize its peace. It is sort of this little nothing… and leads you to a nothing that is so much better.

It is the nothing better we all want to do.