4 Minute Meditations Joseph Organ

Good morning and welcome to your seventy-fourth meditation. How do you console a friend? Do you say everything’s going to be alright or that everything happens for a reason? Or do you say you can’t imagine what it must feel like, or that what they’re going through must be really hard. Maybe you relate their experience to something that you yourself have experienced. Or maybe you insist that what they have lost wasn’t worth having in the first place. Perhaps each one of these approaches has its place depending on the context and the individual you are attempting to console. However, in a general sense, some approaches are better than others. But how do we determine which approach is the right one? And how can we know what to avoid if we want to be a good friend?

The answer must begin not with some abstract dictum, but with your very real, flesh-and-blood, living, breathing friend. Who are they? What are they going through right now? And what might they need from you? You may ask yourself “what would I want in this situation?”, and this could be helpful, absolutely. It puts you in your friend’s shoes, starting you on a path to empathy. But as thoughtful as that question is, it is only a first step. Remember, this is about your friend, not you. That means you will want to consider what they want, and how that may differ from what you think would be best for yourself.

And, very probably, what they want and need in this moment is not to be lectured or taught something. It is a natural impulse. We want to help our friends who are in pain, and sometimes, from the outside it seems obvious that if they simply changed this or that then they would feel better and maybe even avoid similar grief in the future. But, unless they have specifically asked for your advice, to offer it will likely seem smug and unsympathetic.

The same is true of pity. Although we often think of pity as somehow charitable in that it expresses concern for others, what it really does is separates the consoler and consolee into two distinct classes of people. The first is the class of the strong, unscathed, and unafflicted that look on from a place of relative comfort at those who suffer, who are hobbled, and weakened. This kind of dynamic may succeed in making the pitier feel better than before, but most likely will have the reverse effect on the pitied.

Often, the answer to how to be a good consoler is that you don’t have to do anything. You don’t have to say anything. You just have to be there. You have to listen. You have to allow your friend to feel what they feel and allow them to feel supported in doing so… a hug and saying I love you can sometimes help too. Keep it up. You’re doing great. Have a wonderful day.

Good morning and welcome to your seventy-third meditation. The global system in which we live is a capitalist one. Countries jostle for ever-better economic standing, just as the corporations and individuals within them do. And this worldwide obsession with growth is simultaneously outward looking and competitive - the more we see our neighbour reap, the more we tend to want for ourselves - and self-interested and individualistic - we are fixated on immediate benefits as they accrue to us, and tend to be blind to the true costs of said benefits. On the one hand, the competitiveness drives or perpetuates this growth, while the individualism ensures that it never slows or ceases. One is like an unlimited accelerator, while the other is like the absence of a brake.

As anyone can see, the effects of the rise of capitalism are mixed. In India, for example, the overall quality of life has improved drastically over the past 30 years. The BBC reports that rapid economic development in that country has led to improved access to healthcare and hygiene among its citizens which has in turn resulted in life expectancy increasing from 38 to 68 years within a generation.

And yet, along with India’s life expectancy, inequality in how wealth is distributed has also radically increased in recent years. According to Wikipedia, the “richest 1% of Indians own 58% of wealth, while the richest 10% of Indians own 80% of the wealth. This trend has consistently increased, meaning the rich are getting richer much faster than the poor, widening the income gap”. The poor are exploited for their labour and as a result, actually have less access to education and healthcare due to a phenomenon known as poverty trap.

And of course, the exploitation and serious damage left in the wake of capitalism does not end there. Our earth and all the species within it are paying a toll that is inestimable and yet perfectly predictable. Only our blinkered view of the importance of the acquisition of wealth and luxury enables us to magically ignore this fact.

So what can we do? It’s not like we can simply choose a different economic system to operate in, and renouncing all capitalistic ambitions is not going to help anyone. Rather it will likely make your life very difficult and possibly make the lives of those around you more difficult by extension. Remember that it is possible to have financial goals without being mercenary. You should not feel guilty or dubious about your motives. You deserve money. You need it. So go after it! Allow it to improve the quality of your life.

What we can do, however, is to check in with our motives. Ask yourself why you want more money. Is it to make ends meet? For security in case of an incident or for retirement? Maybe it’s so you can live a little more comfortably or fund interesting projects. These are all worthy reasons. If, on the other hand, making more money is about having what others have or having more than them, about status, about excessive consumption, or if your hunt for money becomes a goal in itself and is interfering with, rather than facilitating, an improved quality of life, then it might be worth reassessing. Keep it up. You’re doing great. Have a wonderful day.

Good morning and welcome to your seventy-second meditation. We are, for the most part, living in a post-god world. The Washington Post cites a Gallup survey that tells us that in 1937 church membership in America was at 73% where now the number of Americans who regard themselves as members of a church, synagogue, or mosque has sunk below half. But the change is even more sudden than that.

Good morning and welcome to your seventy-first meditation. For a relationship to be successful it is important to focus on your needs and how you feel, rather than what the other person has done wrong or what they have failed to do. Rather than saying “you never do the dishes” or “you always interrupt me”, it is much more effective to say “I feel like the kitchen is a mess and I could really use some help” or “I really want to tell you this and I need you to let me say what I’ve got to say”. Framing things in terms of your needs and feelings as opposed to as criticism means that your partner is far less likely to get defensive, and therefore, is far more likely to actually listen, be empathic, and cooperate.

Good morning and welcome to your seventieth meditation. It is impossible to live in a society without assuming certain roles. As much as we like to fetishize originality, we do not generally invent roles for ourselves. Rather they tend to be largely pre-made, handed to us by a given situation. And we merely accept them, or dodge them.

A recast of one of our popular episodes! Do you ever put off cleaning the house for so long that it’s actually more work to navigate your cluttered space on a daily basis than it would be to clean it on a weekly one? Do you ever do your laundry, but then stop short of folding it, so that your clean clothes end up wrinkled on a now-unusable surface? Or do you tell yourself you’ll exercise and then keep coming up with excuses not to? Odds are, if you can’t identify with any of these examples, you probably have your very own equivalent.