Just Say No

Rolling out of bed after pressing snooze 12 times in an attempt to salvage another millisecond of sleep (as if this will help your day), scarfing breakfast, speeding to work while watching the rear-view mirror for CHPs, chugging coffee like your life depends on it, and flipping between conference calls, trips to the boss’ office, and managing to meet yet another impossible deadline is only a prelude to an evening full of humdrum errands ranging from Target to that online master’s class to the unattainable job of keeping a Cali home dust-free all before rushing to dinner with the folks.  Sound familiar? I’m sure it does. And you know it doesn’t stop here—wait, there’s a couple of seconds to spare, in which time an endless array of social plans, friends, family, and work obligations fill in the blanks. Some of us are working multiple jobs or carrying the weight of children and a family—multiply the situation by a thousand and you’ll get a glimpse of the stress. This same scenario repeats itself again, and again, and again until at some point along the way, we forget that we are humans rather than work ants carrying out the life task of contributing to the mound. We as young adults also have a hard time saying NO, and that shows when we are attending the birthday party of our second cousin’s brother’s sister’s best friend who we’ve met only twice before running off to the bi-monthly crabfest that is a sin to miss EVER all just in time to catch a late-night movie with the younger siblings who you just couldn’t deny a chaperone. When we get home, we have to catch up on all that TiVo that’s been accumulating and also to “wind down,” as many (myself included) would say, before being able to fall asleep. Once we get into bed, our minds don’t stop churning and thinking about what we did or didn’t accomplish today, what we will or will not accomplish tomorrow, and how to fill that already non-existent time with more “fun” things like BBQs, cocktail parties, and vacations. Why is it that we can’t just slow down?

Some individuals who have been categorized as mentally insane attribute solitude and quiet to the most scary situation in the world—the mind, when left idle, can be a very intimidating place. Taking a moment to stop and smell the roses often leads that otherwise hyper-speed mechanism to find its creativity, but it can also lend time to becoming anxious and antsy, especially for those who can’t locate the desire to lay off the pace a bit. For these people—and I would dare to assume that most of us 20-somethings fall into this category—this is a sure sign that we need to slow down more than anyone else. Stress is one of the biggest causes of disease known to man, but we have become so accustomed to high levels of this killer, we no longer notice when we are strained and even go to great lengths to fill our schedules even more—it’s almost as though we are scared of down-time.

Eastern cultures have always been big proponents of meditation, and I’m finally starting to realize myself that there is some significant weight to the claims. While I have tried my share of meditation to quiet my frenzied spirit and escape my frantic agenda, always in the past I found myself wondering what yummy dinner my man would make, how much money I had in my bank account, and whether I closed that confidential document I left on my desk at work. I would open my eyes to realize I hadn’t focused on my breathing for more than 10 seconds max, hadn’t relaxed my body judging by my now sore back that I strained in my meditation pose, and was more frazzled at having just wasted a very long 20 minutes of life sitting in one place when I could have been doing something much more important, like waxing the beamer, organizing the closet, or finishing that project for work. At some point, however, everyone reaches a pinnacle and needs to just stop. For me that came several weeks ago when I was absolutely convinced I was about to have a monstrous nervous breakdown (keep in mind I’m a diagnosed hypochondriac). I lit a candle, turned on some cheesy nature sounds, and lay down on my yoga mat with eyes closed and a stronger desire than I can describe to just escape it all. I did this for an astonishing (for me) 15 minutes and rose with a feeling I can’t quite articulate. Never before had I felt more awake—must be a miracle from God, energized, and positive. I thought that maybe in my meditative state I took some magic happy pill that made me instantly feel better. While keeping my mind from roaming was quite literally one of the most impossible tasks I’ve encountered, it was an experience that I can compare to nothing else in our overly-scheduled lives.

I won’t mention that I haven’t had the time to meditate since (go figure), but I will say that this med-session put a lot of things into perspective for me. For one, there really is no replacement for just sitting, staring, devoid of thought. We do not need the TV on while we are drinking our nightly glass of wine, our iPods in our ears when we are walking on the beach, a conversation beaming across the table at every dinner. Our daily programs may not become less filled, but we can stop making “fun” plans or finding things to fill our miniscule empty spaces, taking those moments here and there to build a stronghold against letting stress in. Our minds need some time to repair, and this in turn helps our bodies repair. Sometimes we do need to just take a breath, savor the silence, and center.