What I Learned from Meditation — and Making my Daughter Smile
I have been doing a ten-minute meditation daily since September. Two important lessons have emerged from this practice.
The first lesson comes from the observation that I dread nearly everything in my life that is not completely effortless and pleasurable. When I meditate, I observe my thoughts as they come and go. As I sit with my eyes closed, my mind runs from my phone call later that day to what I am going to make for dinner to worries about paying for college. Whether it’s doing dishes or making lunch or reading e-mails, I seem to anticipate almost all activities with anything from mild annoyance to looming dread. In fact, it’s surprising sometimes how much I do not look forward to even mundane tasks that might be fairly benign, like cleaning a spot from a shirt or finding the paperwork I need. Never mind big things, like a difficult conversation or prepping for a high-stakes client. I absolutely loathe those.
So what do I look forward to? Eating — but not shopping for food or cooking it. Sleeping and succumbing again to it when brought out of a deep sleep — but not all the rituals that lead up to bedtime and certainly not the sometimes unpredictable “falling” asleep. (Sleeping takes up an enormous amount of my life but I am unconscious the entire time — so can I really be said to enjoy it?) Petting and cuddling with my dogs — but not any of the chores related to caretaking, such as walking them or feeding them. Watching TV or movies. Reading a good book. These are the essential “leisure activities” for which I save my enthusiasm. You’d think that spending time with my beloved humans — and I do love them — would make this list. But no.
The rest of my life seems to be mostly an endless string of things I “have to do,” interminable days of drudgery bookended by a sweet cup of tea in the morning and some heavenly REM cycles at night (oh, and three not entirely loathsome square meals a day). This was a revelation to me. It’s not that I was under the impression that I was enjoying myself. I have been aware of my generally low enthusiasm for many moments of life for quite some time. It’s just that I did not realize how much of my life I was actively mentally avoiding. This avoidance is called aversion by the Buddhists, while that limited list of pleasures is attachment. They are two sides of the same coin and, together, explain why life is, in a word, a bitch (not to be confused with my own girl dog — she is a delight).
Contrary to my tendency to dread, my grandfather always seemed engaged in life and joyful, even though he had grown up in a modest country home in Ireland, sharing resources with thirteen sisters and brothers; even though he was sent away as a teen by his parents to live and work on the farm of a relative because there were too many mouths to feed. Grandpa ran one little grocery store or another in New York City over fifty years, but all I remember about his store is the candy section. When we visited him at the store, as soon as he set eyes on me and my siblings, his face lit up and he spoke our names with surprise and delight in that exotic Irish lilt, insisting that we take whatever candy we fancied.
Grandpa was never one of those grownups who ignored the kids in favor of adult conversation. While many adults might be bothered by kids traipsing through his neatly ordered workplace, Grandpa took the time to dazzle us with how quickly he could add up the grocery items — all in his head! This could have become a mundane chore for a grocer after the first few years, but he was still delighting in the mental challenge decades into his career. I interviewed Grandpa when I was in junior high for a school project. I sent him a list of questions and he clacked away on his typewriter pages and pages of responses to each one. To the question “What is the secret to happiness?” he replied, “I have always tried to enjoy everything I did.” (Indeed, he enjoyed typing his answers tremendously). It seemed like such a simple statement at the time, and perhaps one that I could not appreciate as a child who did not foresee the endless stream of items on an adult’s daily to-do list. But that answer has come back to me over the years. The first lesson I have learned from meditation comes from recognizing the human tendency to dread so much in our lives — that I should do as Grandpa did and try to enjoy not just selected activities, but literally everything I do.
The second lesson comes from the observation that I have been waiting for an external source to inspire joy in me. While it’s true that there is a limited number of things that do not cause me dread, it is also true that these things rarely bring me unbridled joy. While a good lobster with melted butter does make me happy while I’m eating it, that is fleeting. While watching a good show on Netflix keeps me from being unhappy in the moment, my worries crowd back into my cranium the moment the credits roll. And of course, the non-food, non-sleep, non-dog rest of my day is often the very definition of joyless drudgery. Of course, I am slightly overstating the point. Almost nothing is one hundred percent drudgery from beginning to end, but anticipating something unpleasant is what colors it unpleasant to begin with. And, to answer why the humans I love are not on my list of pleasures, their love is conditional — they love me as long as I say the right thing, do the right thing — and their behavior is unpredictable (unlike my predictable face-licking canines). And yet, how many of us look to relationships as the potential source of happily ever after and are always disappointed?
The Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh said, “Sometimes your joy is the source of your smile, but sometimes your smile can be the source of your joy.” To feel joy first from an external source — say, a sunny day or a surprise letter from a friend — and then to feel that joy manifest in your soul is a sweet experience and one that becomes more and more rare the more responsibilities we have (or the more trauma we experience). But to feel joy generated entirely from inside yourself, manifested in your smile, and then to experience joy bubbling up from within, is a magic trick indeed. This may actually be the foundation of my grandfather’s ability to simply enjoy everything he did. I am nearly fifty years old and it seems silly that I have only now come to the realization that joy can be reliably generated from inside of me, rather than triggered by that promotion I deserve or the accolades that I (or my children) win. I do not have a lot of experience with this — aside from some experiments during meditation when I try to, as Thich Nhat Hanh suggests, water the seeds of joy inside of me so tiny I can barely even find them. But I know from a lifetime of disappointments that nothing I achieve (or my children achieve) brings lasting joy and, if the outside world doesn’t do it, that leaves my inner world.
Jack Kornfield, a Buddhist monk who studied with Thich Nhat Hanh, tells of how he originally responded when he heard the older monk suggest that meditators smile while sitting. Kornfield said to him, “Isn’t that a little like pasting a happy face sticker on — just for show?” The older monk responded, “I have seen so much suffering in the people who come to me, I have to teach joy.” He was denied residence in his native Vietnam where he had helped many victims of atrocities during the Vietnam War; he had seen deep trauma and given the gift of presence to many. So the second lesson I have learned from meditation comes from recognizing my tendency to look for joy in sources outside myself. As Thich Nhat Hanh teaches, I should nurture joy inside of myself, rather than depending on anyone or anything outside of me to generate it.
I do enjoy many moments and I do experience joy. And here I come back to those unpredictable humans I love. One of my saving graces is my absolute need to connect with them. One morning not long ago, I was trying to pack lunch for my daughter, a picky eater who doesn’t want me to mix her food, even in a sandwich. In my rush, I yelled through the closed bathroom door, “Do you want some ham in a bag?!” In my early-morning fog, it struck me as so crass to stuff a hank of cold, wet meat in a zip-lock and call it lunch that I couldn’t stop laughing as I sputtered it over and over to my confused daughter through the door. I may not look forward with bubbling excitement to driving her to meet her friend at the mall. Often, seventy-five percent of my brain is occupied, reciting things I must do or worries I have. But that twenty-five percent is looking for a chance to make a joke, do a funny voice, make fun of myself (because that’s what really cracks a teen up). This is me doing as Grandpa would do — enjoying everything I do, even driving a sometimes moody adolescent around town. And as I drove her to the mall later that day, I kept repeating, “Do you want some ham in a bag?”, cackling with delight and, in turn, cracking her up. And this was, unbeknownst to me, documented on video because, well, teens document everything. When I get her to giggle, I am also emulating Thich Nhat Hahn — generating joy entirely from within, now manifest in the world.
Maybe one reason I am looking to get my sneaky video-taper daughter to smile is that she is not always happy. Since the pandemic, since being trapped in her home and connecting with most people only over a Zoom screen, she has fallen victim to deep depression and compulsive thinking. Of course, this is one phenomenon for which Grandpa’s “enjoy everything” philosophy just isn’t possible. With a good therapist, though, it has gotten much better.
I might not always be able to get her to laugh, but that is not the only way to water the seed of joy inside of me. I also connect with the people I love through writing. When I write a thoughtful essay, whether or not it’s published, I am practicing an anti-dread superpower. I am looking at the people and events in my life without judgment, without anticipation or anxiety. I usually write for selfish reasons — because I feel deeply dissatisfied or outright emotionally strung-out. If I take my time and pay attention, I touch a place of love deep inside and I weep my way through typing the last words. And when the people I love read it and cry too, that’s joy generated within me, manifest in my heart and theirs too.
When you first learn you are pregnant (or that your partner is), it is hard to imagine that you might be trying to convince your child less than two decades later that life is not a bottomless pit of despair and it’s worthwhile to look for beauty in this life — if not for her sake, then for yours. Even if there were no more joy in my life from external pleasures (no more glazed donuts, no more Mandalorian, no more shopping sprees), it wouldn’t matter. I wouldn’t have to look further for a reason to live than my experiences grounded in the lessons of meditation, to enjoy everything I do and to generate joy from within. Laughing and crying for joy come directly from the example of my Grandpa and Thich Nhat Hahn and bring me closer to the ones I love.
In the end, what I did for my daughter was the only thing I know how to do. I dug deep and did as my Grandpa would — clacked away on my keyboard and wrote about what I am still learning in life. To find that seed of joy inside me as small as the embryo she used to be, a seed of joy so small it’s almost imperceptible. And to water it with my own tears.
