Way back in February 2018 someone recommended that I read a book called Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari. I left it a few months after downloading it and reading a few pages. Then three of four weeks ago I started binge reading, and have read all three books he has written which have educated, scared, and freed me in different ways. But I shouldn’t read books.  They only give me ideas.

The message I am taking away is that the most important thing I can do is to know myself, which is a much more difficult task than it sounds. At some point in the future, we will have given enough of our information away on line, that AI algorithms will know what we want than we do. But I don’t want to give any book spoilers away and not do the books justice. The one thing I will take away is meditation.

I’m not a meditation kind of guy, not in the higher level spiritual kind of way. For me, mediation is a sit down with a cup of tea. More importantly, I have no plans to become part of an organised group. This includes joining in on the Power of Now, and mindfulness meme that has taken off. Buddhism is regarded as the true source of this mindfulness, and I don’t want any religious practice and dogma in my life. What’s more, many cultures developed meditation, and any inspection of what Myanmar (formally Burma) is doing to their marginalized Muslim minority makes me doubt Buddhism’s friendly and harmless persona.

I will give the meditation a try. All it needs is for me to sit and stand whilst doing nothing, which is something I almost do anyway. My second room is as ready as it will be and I’m in there now. This is my meditation room. It’s empty enough and has few distractions and reminders of my previous years, which almost makes it a clean slate.

I almost nodded off there, sorry!

We have so many stimuli from all sources telling us what to buy, what will make us happy, what will make others happy, news, fake news, that taking time out will help us find ourselves, and help us cope with the change in the world. There is so much to do, how can I justify doing nothing for a couple of hours a day? How can I not justify it? There’s nothing I can buy that will make me happy. No holiday will make me happy. And so I’m left with making myself happy, or at least more prepared for modern life in a very old school way.

I need to take the headphones off and sit here for a few minutes and that makes me feel anxious. But I know that anxiety is just a chemical reaction in my body, ‘I’ am not anxious. I can’t control which feelings I have, but I can control how I react to them. So headphones off. Wish me luck, I’m going in!