Meditation measures pleasure, a thought for Sophie age 12

Dear Sophie,
You are about to start senior school! Well done!
You have had some lovely times so far in your life and I hope that you will go on having wonderful simple easy pleasures.  These are a few things I wanted to pass on to you as you move on to your new chapter especially as your name means Wisdom.
It is clear that pleasure is relative!  And that the zone of life that is pleasant is quite small when you think just how vast things are.  You have only got to look at the effect of the weather, of the heat and cold and wet and dry to see that we are only able to live in a small zone before we either freeze to death or burn up.  And we can only keep alive when the air is pure enough and we have enough food and enough sleep.  If we go without or have too much of any of them, the very delicate  balance is upset and we don't feel well.  And it can't have passed any of us by that our life span is also limited and not by government health initiatives, it just is limited to a certain number of years.  For life to be pleasant we have to be careful, not too much of this or too little of that.
We take our survival and our right to a pleasant life rather for granted.  From time to time there is a wake up call, we may be alerted to the fragility and beauty of the life around us and feel amazed and grateful to be here.  We may lose someone close to us or our own good health be compromised and then we know to be grateful for our well being and aware that our own life is balanced delicately. This wake up call is important, once we think about it, we wonder about that power which keeps us safe, we wonder what feeds us, what brought us into life and what might be beyond it.  The wisest people have pointed this out and at the same time have given us help.  While we are alive, we have doctors and teachers and lawyers and all manner of clever and artistic people to make our lives easy.
When we start to wonder what lies beyond our life, what will happen when we die, we are helped by wondering and by our own observation.   And we are helped by those people wise enough to help us measure up to this, who have given us ways of touching a space which is real but isn't touched by all the opposites.  These people have found out for themselves and left us special prayers and meditations to prepare.  Meditation is just that, it allows you time to be alone without worrying what you look like, what you are going to eat, to have or to know.  It introduces you to a steady and peaceful place.  It helps you to practice for what is unknown and to be without fear because you meet a very real Present Guide.