Meditation in the age of GenZ — my experience
“Meditation is BS made for either of two people: those who are rich enough to drive to their yoga class in a Lambo, or Indians”— That’s what many of my friends think about meditation.
Maybe because of that influence — and movies that made it seem like a funny and awkward practice — I’d never been interested enough to give it a try myself. It was one year ago when I thought I was practicing meditation. Now I’m not so sure about that.
I read this book called Think and Grow Rich. Although I’ve heard there are different kinds of meditation, I’m sure that this is not close to being one of them. The way I see it, that book is more of a “law of attraction” and “self-confidence” kind of thing.
I practiced those visualization exercises almost every day for 1 year. I used to follow Tony Robbins’ priming videos. I felt great. More confident in myself, empowered, and the path I should take was clear. The problem was that I was calling that meditation only because I was closing my eyes 🙈.
What does meditation mean to me today? Another book called Waking Up educated me more on the topic. Now I understand meditation as a skill to control the mind and see our thoughts, striving to get rid of them if possible, and live completely in the present.
I can’t say I liked the book. It was awesome but very weird at the same time. It talked about consciousness both from philosophical and scientific points of view. Perhaps of the things that blew my mind the most is how there can be areas of our brain that we aren’t quite conscious about, and how our left and right hemispheres connect.
There are ideas from that book that sound simple but I haven’t understood yet. For instance, that a feeling of pain can only arise into consciousness can only arise in this the only place where it exists— I’m paraphrasing by the way but it still doesn’t make sense what Sam was trying to say.
In any case, I think that the most valuable insight I gained was the power of controlling thyself. I’m starting to understand better the phrase “I think, therefore I exist”. If we are able to control our minds, we are able to control our actions, and use that as a baseline to do anything we put our minds to.
Ever since I read the first chapter, I knew I could give myself something better than the law of attraction. That something was surprisingly “doing nothing”. It sounds easy, and it may have been easier for people living in Marcus Aurelius’ times. I’m convinced though, that most GenZs’ lifestyles are not optimized for meditation.
While having an interesting conversation with a friend called Ahmed, I realized that social media is (indeed) just feeding the most primitive parts of our brain. So my train of thought goes like this:
- World weapon wars are over, everyone (including myself) are bombarding each other with information
- These days, clear thinking > physical power
- Clear thinking: seeing things just as they are (objectivity). I think you need to
- Important factor to consider: the reptilian brain. Easy things make us feel a lot of pleasure, we care of what others think of us
- Social media is not only bombarding us with information, but it’s targeting our reptilian brains directly
- I’m not satanizing Mr.Zuckerberg’s creations. I just need to give myself some more time to look inwards and know myself better before the algorithms do that for me too
So I started simply: 1 minute of sitting down on the floor, in a quiet room, alone. Only breathing and observing my thoughts. I’ve realized that things like this put time into perspective. How can 1 minute on Instagram feel like nothing while 1 minute of doing nothing feel like an eternity?
I have heard of apps that guide you into longer meditations (around 5 minutes to 1 hour). I have tried some of them but always found the voice to be a distraction and they made me realize that I needed to sleep 😂.
I gotta thank my mentor Michael Raspuzzi who told me and my friends from TKS about Sam Harris (author of Waking Up). Interestingly, he recommended his app, but you already know what I actually ended up doing.
Well, Michael has been meditating for longer periods of time with a meditation coach called Steve. His experience has been so great that he wanted to share that with us. So over the next month, we will be taking weekly meditation sessions with Steve too!
Reflecting on this opportunity, I think it’s perfect for me at this moment. I’ve been thinking too much about some life situations, while trying to keep up my professional performance.
The sessions are gonna take place on Friday afternoons. I don’t think it could get better! Over the past 1.5 months I’d felt bored and a bit lonely on Fridays. Although I don’t want to see this as a escape to it, I want to see it as an opportunity to reunite myself.
My hope is for proper meditation to set my mind up to deal with anything, peacefully. In my life, health is the baseline to do anything else without limits. I am really excited to see how my performance, thoughts, and emotions change with this experience. I’ll post more articles on my observations along the journey.
Thanks for reading,
Sofi
Hey! I’m S🧠FIA, an ambitious teenager developing synthetic biology projects and creating related content.
Just for growth, I also innovate at TKS🦄, participate in The BioDojo, play the piano, take photos, and 🌎 connect with new people every week (hit me up!).
