It was the summer of 1985. I had just returned to my home - or, I should say, my mother’s home - after barely finishing law school and flunking the Bar exam by 1 point. I was exhausted, demoralized, and broke. My health - both physical and mental - was in shreds. I had put my engagement on hold because I didn’t know myself any more, much less whether I wanted to be with my fiance. It wasn’t him. It was me. I didn’t even know whether I really wanted to be a lawyer any more.
Back in my hometown, I gradually recovered. I cleaned everything in sight. I enrolled in a Bar Review course, and really began studying this time. I did a New York Times crossword puzzle every day to get myself going. I journalled a lot. And drank a lot of coffee. I started to feel a bit like myself. I got a job clerking for an estate planning solo practitioner and a volunteer position at the local Legal Aid Society. I got back into choral singing again.
And my friends rallied around me. That was healing. One friend in particular started talking to me about meditation and how it had benefitted him. He spoke about his experience with Transcendental Meditation. My takeaway from that was that the point of it was to reach a point at which one had no thoughts at all. I thought about that (of course - I thought constantly). It sounded wonderful to be able to not think at all.
I worked hard at pursuing that goal - and failed spectacularly. That’s what happens when you push so hard at accomplishing something that you push the goal farther and farther away. I found that, try as I might, I could NOT just not think. So, I let meditation go after a while.
It wasn’t until years later, in the mid-00s, after switching careers, pursuing and earning a Master’s Degree in Mental Health Counseling, and going through menopause, that I found myself in a therapist’s office myself, falling apart.
I’d been to therapists before and believed in the process, even as I felt hopeless that I could ever get myself back on track, regain the sanity that I felt sure I was losing, and become successful in a profession I really did want to practice. The therapist spoke about meditation and I thought, “Oh boy - here we go again.”
This time, it was different. It was cle.arly explained to me that the object of mindfulness meditation was to be able to focus on and accept the present moment, just as it is, without judgment. I wasn’t required to stop thinking: indeed, I was encouraged to continue to think and to develop the ability to step back from my thoughts and observe them as they occurred - for that matter, to observe whatever incoming data from my thoughts, emotions, physical sensations or my environment happened to come into focus. Not to change anything, simply to decide whether I wanted to grab onto a particular piece of data and focus on it, or to just let it go. To decide whether the thought was useful or not useful.
This, I gradually realized, I could do. I could meditate on my breath. Or music. Or the sky. Or on sobbing. I did a lot of that. I gradually began to develop compassion for the self that sobbed and appreciation for the fact that I noticed birdsongs as I sipped my morning coffee. I came to believe that despite not being able to change everything in my life, I could simply be present with the parts over which I had no power and change their hold over me through acceptance. And I came to understand that I had the power to change me through that same practice of acceptance, rather than opposition.
In short, mindfulness changed my life. It can change yours, too. It doesn’t take sitting on a cushion for hours on end - although you can certainly do that, if you have hours. These days, I find that when noticing that things are going south fast, I can hit the reset button by taking a few breaths, grounding myself, remembering my purpose for that day, that hour, or that moment, and moving forward into fulfilling that purpose.
In coming posts, I’ll talk about other adventures in my mindfulness travels and share practical ways that applied mindfulness can improve lives. Thanks for reading - I hope you’ll stay tuned.
(And by the way, in case you’re wondering, I did marry him. We’ve now been together in both un-wedded bliss and formally hitched for almost 50 years.)