lie no. 18 | 05.10.19

I stuck to the usual script with my therapist during an appointment last July—until I didn’t. 

Knowing we’d run out of time, I deemed it the perfect opportunity to audition with honesty.

“Oh, hey, so, there’s this marathon,” I said, walking out the door of his office. 

“You’re running in one, that’s great!” he said, so proud.

“Uh, no. Well, kind of. It’s in my head,” then I laughed, because that’s what I do when I’m uncomfortable. “A mental marathon. You know, racing thoughts. How do I get rid of them? Time to clear the course and reopen the roads to normalcy!”

Last July, sidelined by, let’s call it an injury for now, I slowed way down; and it’s like all the thoughts I’d diligently worked to stay in front of were catching up with me at once. Millions of thoughts raced by. They showed no signs of slowing down and I couldn’t keep up anymore. I was exhausted.

This was probably the most honest thing I’d ever said to my therapist in the ten years I’d been seeing him off and on. 

I was asking for help for maybe the first time ever, even if I didn’t know that’s what I was doing.

He told me to download Dan Harris’ meditation app. 

Had he told me to try meditation, I’d have laughed, despite my desperation. 

Had he told me to download any other meditation app, I’d likely have ignored him. 

Had he even told me what it was called—10% Happier—I’d have scoffed. This was DEFCON one! Or five! Whatever the highest level is, this was. I don’t have time for that 10% weak sauce. Plus, it wasn’t even happiness I was seeking, dangerously unaware just how short I’d let the supply get. Did I say I wanted to be happier?! No! Gross.

But, by suggesting an app created by a journalist, designed for “fidgety skeptics,” he got through to me. And I ignored the name, accepting the challenge no one gave me to get so good at this that I’d get that missing zero back into its name.

I started meditating the next morning. I set the app’s reminder feature for every morning at 7, which gave me time to get it in between working out and the rest of the world waking up.

I really excelled. Less with the whole meditation thing and more with my perfect attendance—which the app tracks!—and my copious note taking. I was learning so much!

I even read the corresponding book Harris wrote (by the same name). I couldn’t wait for the test, which I knew I’d nail, and wondered when it was. I’d need to get it on my calendar. For sure.

Oh, dear.

In meditation, someone is always telling you there’s no wrong way to do it. If your mind wanders, it doesn’t make you a bad meditator.

While I was so busy trying to impress a mobile phone application, trying to make it really proud of me, I didn’t notice how much it was helping heal my heart. 

I spent the next month laser focused on perfecting my new role of Thoughts Trainer. I’d have those bitches on such a short leash they’d never be tempted to wander.

A real thought leader, I was. I’d probably win an award one day for this god’s work I was doing.

Fortunately, for all of us, that’s not how it works. 

With my mind thoroughly distracted, my heart got a chance to do the talking for a change.

My heart speaks through my hand, I’ve learned. And she’s got a lot to say. 

I don’t want to be too hard on my mind here. Somewhere deeper, somewhere beyond the perfectionism and pleasing tendencies, my mind was learning a new language: love.

A language it never got a chance to really learn, or maybe it just forgot, because it had been using all its might pretending. 

My mind was learning the only language the heart understands, the only dialect it speaks. 

My mind was selflessly unlearning its long-held belief that feelings and emotions have negative connotations. 

When my mind stripped the sarcasm and vitriol shrouding the lexicon of love it’d been speaking fluently as long as I can remember down to the naked truth, it made my heart sing.

Like a proud mom, I posted its first little ditty on Instagram, not pausing to consider the consequences or what people might think.

When my heart sings, my soul dances.

Of course, I didn’t understand any of this back then. I only knew it made me feel… something.

As my heart practiced its craft, my mind—still under the guise of mastering meditation back then—got the hell out of the way. It chimed in only to name and start to claim what made me feel, and how it made me feel.

And that, it turns out, is the point of meditation.

Ironically, that’s when the truth became the Lies.