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Today's
Meditation:
Personally, I'm not a fisherman. I enjoyed
fishing when I was a kid, but it's not something that I've
stuck with as an adult. But the important part of
Ted's words here isn't the part about fishing, but about
having an activity that allows a person to be completely
immersed in the moment, focusing only upon that particular
activity and not thinking about the other things in life
that tend to get our minds going 'round and 'round without
being able to stop-- which is definitely one of the main
causes of frustration and burnout in people.
When you have forms of meditation of your own, when you
have activities in which you can become completely
immersed, then you have ways to deal with the hectic pace
of life. You have methods for calming your mind and
finding clarity. You have a strategy for breaking
out of the rat race and defining your participation in it
on your own terms.
I've got many such strategies for meditation, and none of
them involve sitting quietly in one place for hours (I
always fall asleep when I try it that way!). I bike,
I run, I do dishes, I shovel snow, I wash my car, I read
good books, I go for long walks, I listen closely to music
that's playing. Anything that keeps my mind occupied
on one particular task and keeps it from going off on all
the tangents that it so loves to explore is helpful to me,
and I finish those tasks feeling refreshed and
revitalized, ready to face the world and deal with it on
my terms. When I neglect doing these sorts of
things, I find myself getting stressed and feeling frantic
and frustrated, and I don't like feeling that way.
What will do it for you is obviously up to you. You
are who you are, and you have your own interests and
abilities. Perhaps drawing or painting, or cleaning
the house, or ironing clothes. Anything that keeps
you focused fully on what you're doing, keeping your mind
occupied on something you're doing, can be a very helpful
and useful part of your life.
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