McMEDITATE

“INTERESTED?”

This was the text I got from my wife, along with a web link to a beginners’ meditation class that our local parks and recreation branch was hosting. I read all about the benefits of meditation on the class website: clearer thinking and less emotional turmoil, lower blood pressure, greater intimacy with friends and family members, and a deeper sense of meaning and purpose. But was it for me? I couldn’t think of one person in my family who meditated, and so I looked at the idea with a mixture of suspicion and interest.

“Believe me, it will be good for you—and you need this,” I was told by my better half. I didn’t need much convincing. I had felt woefully unbalanced the last few months, as I had attempted to absorb an ocean of information that came with taking on a new job. My mind often wandered upstairs to fuss over a bottomless inbox in my home office as I was sitting downstairs at the family dinner table. I was months behind where I should have been in my new writing project. If the lobes of my brain were canned cling peaches, any creative spark would have drowned in the syrupy sludge of deadlines and commitments before it connected to the gray matter. Maybe this would be just what the doctor ordered, I tried to tell myself.

Nah.

I should have known that my brain on shamrocks would have none of it.