Why Grannies meditate!

You might ask why would a Granny meditate? So just in case you might want to know here goes! 

Two Grannies plus a daughter

All Grannies and Grandpas have been children and teenagers, have fallen in love, have had families, careers and had a lot of birthdays.  Our passion now is more likely to be directed at gardening or card games or crosswords and when we write our Christmas cards, there are more and more gaps in our address book where friends and relatives have died.

Top dog

Your arm isn't your arm

There aren't many Grannies with their own parents around, we are the top dogs now but we know our turn to drop out of someone's address book will come.  If you meditate, this isn't such a gloomy option  even if you think you aren't much good at it, even if you think the rest of your life is a bit of a mess. When you meditate, however well or badly, you get a bit of distance between you and your so called life and you begin to see that you are the life that fills the body, that enlivens the mind, that directs the thinking.  You know that your arm is your arm but you aren't it!  Your mind is your mind but you aren't it!  All the things which seem so close up and real and belong to some part of your identity aren't you, they belong to you.

family group

So, what are you?  Meditation helps to see that the you that you really are is steady, it doesn't age, doesn't go in for success and failure, for highs and lows and has watched peacefully as you have whizzed through childhood, teenagerdom, adulthood, motherhood, grandmotherhood and every other hood you have become.  It is the other side of you but more quietly real and when you give up the childish part, the teenage part, the lover, the wife, the mother, the aunt, and then the granny, it just calls you back home.

If you are going on holiday, you prepare, you don't go and buy extra food and stock up your fridge, there is something rather satisfactory about the clean and empty shelves.  You prepare because you know that during the time you are away, you won't need things and you want to leave a clean space.  You get clever about not packing every piece of clothing and you buy a suitcase which wheels along behind you and isn't too big.  You think about what you can pass on to your children and grandchildren which might be useful to them, material things that you don't need, a bit of cash, some furniture, a picture or two and you hope that easing into your own freedom will help them to know that your life and theirs are the same life which comes to be lived and receives you and then them back and never ever comes to an end.

Meditation helps to realise this, it doesn't need to make you a holy Joe, it is really just common sense plus a bit of determination when you have twigged that there is one part of you which is real and another which is just your belongings.