Guided Meditation*

*not yet performed on real people

I love listening to guided meditations when I actually have the presence of mind to remember to do them, which is not often.

I remember with clarity my first one: it was in my 9^th grade speech class. The teacher had us all lie on the floor. He turned off the lights and “guided” us up into space and then down again, and it’s a feeling of calm and transcendence I’ve been chasing ever since.

The other day in a conversation about general existential dread my sister said, “Is it just a human thing that we all think things were better in the past?” She was referring, of course, to our “glory days” in the 1990s.

Definitely. For most people, especially their childhood and teenage years were objectively better and they felt pretty good comparative to adulthood: you had few responsibilities, you were young and healthy, everything still seemed new and shiny and exciting. Of course it was better.

Me at 16, years before I knew what a urinary tract infection was.

Thinking about that conversation as well as the fact that I really should be better about making meditation a habit gave me the idea for the following guided mediation script. I meant it to be funny, but after reading, maybe it’s more bittersweet?

Anyway! For your entertainment:

Take a deep breath and relax your body.

Close your eyes.

Breathe in for 5 beats: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5

Hold at the top for 4: 1, 2, 3, 4

Now breathe out for 7 beats, but first I’m going to talk for a bit while you wonder if you’re supposed to breathe normally or go ahead and keep holding it until I start counting, aaaaaand 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7

Think back now to when you were 14. Picture yourself at exactly that age.

Your mom has just picked you and your two best friends up from the mall.

You have a new set of earrings from Claire’s, and a cassette tape of your favorite grunge band that you bought with money your mom gave you.

You do not have a job. You are not expected to have a job.

Competent adults seem to be in charge of everything that matters.

You and your friends convince your mom to stop by Blockbuster’s to pick out a movie.

You all agree on a romantic comedy with Sandra Bullock, and your mom agrees. Success!

At home, she orders pizza. You eat it with glee, then polish it off with a brownie a la mode.

You are effortlessly thin and naturally athletic. You look down at your flat stomach and cannot imagine how it could ever grow out.

You do not know what knee or back pain feels like.

You don’t know what a UTI is.

Being “online” is a novelty, and social media does not exist.

In your room, you and your friends sit on the floor and make a list of the boys at school that you think are cute.

You fantasize about what your first kiss will feel like as you lie on the floor with your friends and listen to your new tape, both front and back.

At night, you watch the movie on a living room floor pallet. It does not hurt, as you are not heavy or always-sore enough for the floor to feel uncomfortable.

You wake up refreshed in the morning, not yet knowing what a stiff neck feels like.

Your friends’ moms pick them up, and you hang out with your own mom, who is also young and healthy, relatively.

You start to feel sleepy from your late night, and lay your head in her lap.

She strokes your hair until you drift off.