Meditation like keeping your hat on in a high wind

Sister Wendy Beckett painted by Mary Cook

Meditating when your mind is heavy with thoughts  is like walking in a high wind trying to keep your hat on.  You have to keep your hand on the hat and it is the same with meditation, you have to keep your mind steady or steady it up when it goes walkabout.  The Dalai Lama speaks of calm abiding and consideration of the true nature of emptiness which is helpful because agitation or thoughts leading to particular feelings are the very opposite of calm abiding and are clearly not a state of emptiness.  And in calm abiding where no thought intrudes, there is a wonderful peace which is worth tramping through the wild winds of the mind to get to.
Trying to keep your mind steady by giving it things, by distracting it with pleasures or numbing it with mind changing substances is a poor substitute for this peace because none of those things give lasting peace of mind.  But the trouble is we think that they will so off we set off into life forgetting that there will be high drama, passions, fury, jealousy, vanity and unkindness, the high winds, beastly snow and roaring heat of the world of the mind.  Sister Wendy Beckett said of stillness that Be Still and Know that I am God means that we can't "know" the unchanging unless we are still.