Wherever You Go, There You Are: Mindfulness meditation for everyday life

by Jon Kabat-Zinn

Meditation is not about trying to become a nobody, or a contemplative zombie, incapable of living in the real world and facing real problems. It’s about seeing things as they are, without the distortions of our own thought processes. Part of that is perceiving that everything is interconnected and that while our conventional sense of “having” a self is helpful in many ways, it is not absolutely real or solid or permanent. So, if you stop trying to make yourself into more than you are out of fear that you are less than you are, whoever you really are will be a lot lighter and happier, and easier to live with, too.

There is a price we pay for being attached to a narrow view of being “right.” My passing mood state is far less important to me than her trust.

You have to be continually mindful and present so that you aren’t lingering with a view of things that no longer applies.

Old tapes from my own upbringing seem to surface with the volume on full blast before I know what is happening. Archetypal male stuff, about my role in the family, legitimate and illegitimate authority and how to assert my power, how comfortable I feel in the house, interpersonal relationships among people of very different ages and stages and their oft-competing needs. Each day is a new challenge. Often it feels overwhelming, and sometimes quite lonely. You sense widening gulfs, and recognize the importance of distance for healthy psychic development and exploration; but the moving apart, healthy as it may be, also hurts. Sometimes I forget what it means to be an adult myself and get stuck in infantile behaviors. The kids quickly straighten me out and wake me up again if my own mindfulness is not up to the task at that moment.

To my mind, the best way to impart wisdom, meditation, or anything else to your children, especially when they are young, is to live it yourself, embody what you most want to impart, and keep your mouth shut. The more you talk about meditation or extol it or insist that your children do things a certain way, the more likely you are, I think, to turn them off to it for life. They will sense your strong attachment to your view, the aggression behind your dominating them and enforcing certain beliefs that are only your own and not their truth, and they will know that this is not their path but yours.

If you are devoted to your own meditation practice, they will come to know it and see it, and accept it matter of factly as part of life, a normal activity. They may even sometimes be drawn to imitate you, as they do with most other things parents do. The point is, the motivation to learn meditation and to practice should for the most part originate with them, and be pursued only to the degree that their interest is maintained.

Perhaps you forgot or didn’t quite grasp that meditation really is the one human activity in which you are not trying to get anywhere else but simply allowing yourself to be where and as you already are. This is a bitter medicine to swallow when you don’t like what is happening or where you find yourself, but it is especially worth swallowing at such times.