Hi everyone!
Today I will share with you a chronicle about meditation and stress in our world.
Hope you will like it.
It was really amazing to write this chronicle and something I will continue to do, and maybe (when I am better at writing) send some of my chronicles to an editorial office which makes newspapers :)
Here is what I wrote:
The benefits of meditation
In this chronicle I will talk about the issue that life can sometimes feel as an everlasting to-do-list. Because in our busy lives it can actually fell so. I will also suggest several solutions to this problem.
We start with an example of an employee who works 8 hours per day, have several interests and maybe is ploitically active. Even though this person dosn’t have a family he or she can still be very busy with completing the tasks on either work or of its hobbies. So different interests makes ones to-do-list longer. Another example of a depressed person who can’t work and don’t have any hobbies there seems to be non to-do-list at all. That is another issue, when people don’t do so much things because of this or that reason. But still I would like to suggest that even for a depressed person with no interests and no job there has to be a to-to-list, because there is still tasks to actually do. Like for example going to the laundry and go buying food.
Which one is the happiest person? (try atleast to think 2 minutes on this question before you continue to read)
So now you have propbably started to think about the question above and have some arguments for and against. My point of view is that if a person is labeled as depressed the correct answer should be that he or she is more unhappy than the high-functioning working person with lots of interest. That isn’t always the case I think because of this problem with people becoming burn out quite often in todays society, but still you can be completely miserable and completely busy at the same time, if you understand what I mean?
This takes me in to the topic that happiness dosen’t always come from doing lots of things ie. They have long to-do-lists so by trying to answer the question in the title ”Is life a continuos and everlasting to-do-list?”. When will you actually find peace (and happiness) in your life? By taking the first person example in relation to most peoples lives it seems that this persaon has and only has its to-do-list and no free time at all, while the person in the other example seems to have too much free time and can most likely be bored by being understimulated. But as I said earlier the first person can still be bored but not by the same reasons.
So the answer to my question in the title can’t be either work or don’t work. We have to find a way to rest in-between-moments of activity to actually relax and recharge your batteries. For this there is several opinions but I would like to share with you the benefits of meditation or the benefits of relaxing tecniques. When you start to meditate at first all the old stuff that you don’t even want to think about starts to come to the surface of your mind and it can be quite unpleasant to sit and meditate. For the first thing that is absolutely normal and happens to almost everybody who starts to meditate, the solution should not be to get up and do tasks on your to-do-list but rather learn to actually relax in the present moment and be kind towards your body. I think there is a saying or ought to be that ”All your pain is your body telling you to slow down” or as Ajahn Brahm put it in his book Mindfulness, Bliss and Beyond ”Death is natures way of forcing you to slow down”. So therefore I don’t think the solution to depression is to start filling up your calender completely with different tasks. But too actually combine activity with some rest ie. To learn meditation.
To argue for that meditation is good versus depression and overworking it is because it fills you with mental energy and you start to enjoy life again ie. That is for sure the end of depression because when you are depressed you can’t enjoy things anymore. Several monks says that ”Nothing is heavy if we now how to let go”, because letting go means that you start to relax and fill your mind with positivty again. So to connect with the examples I gave in the beginning of this chronicle both the persons can be really unhappy and it is not a guaranteed solution that activity brings you joy again.
Best regards,
Fredrik
May peace be with all of you!
