A Waste of Time

Photo by Sasha Martynov

Catholics call it mental prayer, Muslims call it remembrance. A lot of folks call it mindfulness, but if that sounds too new-agey for you, then try silence and stillness.

It doesn’t matter what you call it, meditation is a waste of time and maybe that’s the point. It fails to check the boxes of the things we value most. In a time when everyone is speaking all at once, silence. In a culture that idolizes productive output, nothing to show for it. In a society that worships achievement, it provides no outward badge of accomplishment. No one gets famous from meditating, and even if they did, how could you prove they were great at it? For all we know, they could have their eyes closed thinking about which kinds of sandwiches are tastiest to eat.

Even the idea that meditation somehow provides you a sense of calm-on-demand is bogus. As if sitting with your eyes closed and heart open is some magic Pez dispenser full of free Xanax for the soul.

Quite the opposite actually! Silence and stillness are often an invitation for all those negative and anxious thoughts you’ve been stuffing down to rise to the surface.

And yet, perhaps meditation is a large part of the solution we need right now. Stop and be still, take fifteen minutes of your life and be intentional about throwing them into the abyss. It makes you realize how little control we have over the things in this world. You are not God, but a small piece of the whole, and there is a strange peace in that.

But on the other side of that lack of control there is an increased knowledge that you do, in fact, control some things. Put in biblical terms, you distinguish which are the trees of the garden, and which are the trees of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. You learn which fruit will feed you and which fruit will bring about your demise. Turns out in your corner of the universe you do have dominion, and the ability to change things.

But again, you cannot change other people, though you may desperately want to. Most notable among those you cannot change are the people closest to you like your boyfriend, your mom, your spouse. Crazy as it sounds, meditation helps us relinquish the urge to control others.

No, you can’t change them, but you can change yourself (which invariably ends up changing them anyhow).

Meditation is silence in a time when we’re always stimulated. Take time to hear nothing – and what will you hear instead? Perhaps you’ll hear a need you’ve been neglecting for a while or your own panic at the thought of being alone. Maybe you’ll just hear all the auditory plaque that’s built up in the cracks of your brain over the years – dismembered snippets of Diet Coke commercials and the bridge of a Dua Lipa song.

The silence raises a disturbing question – does the world really need more of me? When everyone is sharing thoughts and opinions, meditation reveals that the things I say are not original and perhaps my own voice is better left unspoken.

Meditation is a waste of time. It doesn’t outwardly grow anything or progress some purpose. It doesn’t increase our earthly power or produce anything of material value. Meditation muzzles our ego-crazed, self-absorbed words and behaviors. It’s a difficult discipline, a purposeful respite from our addiction to ourselves.

And maybe that’s the point.