About meditation – Die schöne Kunst des Innehaltens

What is meditation? It is one of the most essential activities in life, and yet we get little in education. Meditation is a spiritual activity that drives the human spirit away from fear of the future and anger about the past. It brings the human soul to more gratitude for the “here and now”, to acceptance, compassion and happiness. If you have a religious education, meditation resembles praying and contemplation, but in meditation, we don’t need to talk and in a certain way, we don’t even need to think, we prefer silence. Just like sports, it is good for body and soul, but it also requires time and regular practice. Meditation is becoming popular and there are plenty of methods and courses offered.

A near colleague of mine offered me this excellent book from Christophe André (the original title is ‘Méditer, jour après jour’). This book is really a work of art. Every chapter shows a beautiful painting, perfectly chosen to describe a state of mind. The author guides the reader’s attentiveness through the details of the paintings to bring him to a new awareness about an important matter in life, such as accepting, letting go or loving. I learned about the difference between “Aufmerksamkeit” (focused, analytical attention) and “Achtsamkeit” (wide attention for the environment, attentiveness, mindfulness).

The book also contains two audio CD’s with meditation guidance. The refined finish of the book is a joy in itself. You can open it at any chapter and start reading; the order in which you read the chapters is not so important. This book will find a fixed spot in my mental living room.

In these borderline times, where traffic and computers offer a thousand opportunities to get upset, meditation may be a good prevention of illness, despair, addiction or dependence. It shows that beautiful things invented thousands of years ago, always come back, no matter how we ignore them in daily life.

Pressure on kids

Pressure on kids must be the worst injustice tolerated in society today. Even more than tolerated, it is cultivated. Fear of the future makes parents choose for a complex path of training towards ‘high performance’. The rat race starts at birth. Life is a steep climb to the top.

It is good to motivate and stimulate kids to reach something in life. But what if the basic talents are simply not there? Or what if the talents are there, but the kids suffer under the pressure exercised upon them? Very often, failure anxiety destroys all talent.

Nowadays, studying for a degree is not even enough, you have to acquire a whole bunch of skills on top. You have to play sports, music, golf and practice Japanese martial arts. You have to learn to dance. You need social skills, learn to organise events and develop leadership. You have to acquire experience. You have to do an internship at Google and Apple. By the time you’re 25, you should have travelled to New York, Mumbai, Shanghai and Singapore.

I don’t mean to say the development of talents is not important. We don't want children with the complacency of Rip Van Winkle. But we need to be realistic. The virtue of patience is required, as well as true motivation and curiosity. Some kids are under too much pressure and disappointment is lurking when they get older. Another problem is that some other kids are not participating in this mad rat race. They may stay behind because they were born in the wrong household. They risk to bully their better fellow class mates and drive their teachers to a burn-out. Most of them will never really be fit for modern office life.

People don’t realise sufficiently that talent development is only part of your full personal development. What strikes me, is that people have become very demanding in terms of performance, but in return, as if it were some kind of compensation, they stay extremely permissive in terms of attitude. The reason is that our society is based on meritocracy. In terms of discipline, style, politeness and friendliness, we have lowered the standards considerably and nobody seems to mind.

I refer to my blog “Raising kids in the 21st century”.