It's bit of a mummy mantra - I just want five minutes peace. I've written previously about how much I value solitude and this mission was about making time for something I value. My challenge this week was to spend five minutes each day meditating. No rules other than to sit, be and try not to scratch any itches.
I've been toying with starting a meditation practise for fifteen years. At university I attended a meditation club - half a dozen introverted, young men, favouring a post goth aesthetic, sat in a small circle in a draughty church hall. Having never meditated before I asked them how it was done (meditation was not big in South London). I was told, 'You just sit'. We sat for seventy two days...Actually it was about fifteen minutes but man did each minute count! At the end I felt like that chick Cheryl Strayed. I wasn't sure how I had survived such an uncomfortable period of time. When I explained to the boys how hard it had been they looked perplexed; how could sitting in silence be such a hardship? I never returned.
Over the years I kept going back to meditation in a theoretical sense. I learned that it could actually change the structure of your brain. Meditation would make me a calmer, healthier, less impulsive person - never had it seemed I could gain so much from so little. Of course I never actually did it, so I will never know.
On day one of this challenge I didn't even think about meditating and on day two I thought about meditating and what I thought was, ugh. On day three I totally planned to meditate after dinner but then I had some work to do and the kid was a pain and basically I was too stressed to meditate, that's a thing right?
So I got up this morning and I had done precisely no meditation IN A WEEK and I thought to myself, I will meditate for half an hour and I will make up all the time and I will write about how the smallest things are the hardest to start and then I thought - this is bullcrap of the highest order.
I want to be a person that meditates but I don't want to meditate. And that's okay. Mission Acceptance is about embracing who I am and that is someone that does not want to meditate and whilst I might be happier if I did it, I certainly won't be happier if I stress about getting it done for the rest of my life. So I'm shelving the zen for now and although I failed in spectacular fashion I did gain something - an amazing mission for next week...
If you want to join Mission Acceptance and find out what my next challenge is, I'll be sending out the details on Monday night instead of Sunday, so there's time to sign up!
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