Almost every day for the past several years, I have meditated very badly for ten minutes in the morning. Occasionally I’ll bring it down to seven minutes (which feels like a vacation!), and there was a stretch there where I was pushing myself to do 15 (oh, the agony), but mostly I have decided that ten is better than nothing. So every morning I sit on my couch with my feet up on the coffee table (no cross-legged vibes for me) and attempt to focus on my breathing for ten minutes.

It occurred to me this morning, meditating right before sitting down to write this, that I would love/hate to see a montage of all the ways I meditate badly. It would be depressing, probably, but also hilarious: a blooper reel of how not to meditate, featuring multiple pick-ups of my phone to see how much time is left, taking a quick bathroom break while “focusing on my breathing” (so it counts, right?!), lunging for my notebook to write something down, literally giving up and picking up the novel I’m reading while the timer counts down to zero, and so on, and so on.

But here’s the other thing: as far as I know, I have the longest-running, most consistent meditation practice of anyone I know. Other people might have done more intense meditation for shorter bursts of time, or maybe they use it as a self-care tool occasionally, but I’ve been plodding along doing this shit badly every single morning for YEARS!!! I say that not to brag, but to remind myself of what is actually important, and of why I do this at all.

I almost never feel like my meditation practice is helpful in the moment. In the moment, I’m doing all of the above to distract myself, albeit mixed in with a few solid minutes daily of quieting my mind. But when I skip my practice for a few days? Suddenly it becomes abundantly clear why I meditate: because I become an irrational, reactionary cookie monster without it.

It turns out that over the years, in tiny fits and spurts in between my extremely transparent attempts to avoid sitting with myself and my breath, I have slowly, infinitesimally increased my tolerance for time spent sitting with myself and my breath. It’s almost imperceptible, this increase, and every day I feel guilty for reaching for my phone yet again instead of sitting still, but the fact is that this practice has made an impact on my life. Even though I do it badly! Even though it annoys me almost the entire time! It is still worth it, it has still taught me so much, it has still helped me grow.

Or, as someone named G. K. Chesterson once said: “Anything worth doing is worth doing badly.”

Earlier this week I was reading this funny book and was so struck by one of the passages near the end. She quoted this poem by Walt Whitman:

Sometimes with one I love I fill myself with rage for fear I effuse unreturn’d love, 

But now I think there is no unreturn’d love, the pay is certain one way or another 

(I loved a certain person ardently and my love was not return’d, 

Yet out of that I have written these songs). 

What he’s saying is that no matter what happens in a relationship, you’ll always be getting some kind of return on your investment. There is no such thing as wasted love.

If you’re a writer, you get to write about your heartbreak. If you’re a podcaster, you get to talk about it. If you’re an artist, you get to make it into something beautiful. If you’re a life-liver, you will always get to learn something valuable to take with you on to the next experience.

Another way of saying this is the saying “It’s all grist for the mill,” which means that all things are a potential source of profit or advantage. Or, as Oprah says, “Things happen for me, not to me”: everything is useful in one way or another.

I like this way of thinking about life as a great big classroom full of teachers and lessons. It gives me solace to know that I can’t mess it up: the pay is certain, one way or another.

On an episode of Rework, the Basecamp team once talked about the concept of the two tokens that exist in every interaction with a customer. The idea is that you always have a choice of which token you want to take when some kind of negative situation happens. You can take the token that says, “This is not really a big deal”, or you can take the token that says “This is the worst thing that has ever happened!” It’s your choice, but the thing to remember is that the customer will always take whichever token you don’t choose. 

So if your company decides it’s no biggie, the customer might feel unheard and upset and pick up the token of being hurt and outraged. But if you treat your customers’ problems like they’re an enormous issue, they may just pick up the token of being calm and patient and kind. And let’s face it: any problem a customer of yours is having while using your products or services IS an enormous issue for you. 

The key, of course, which they don’t explicitly say in the episode, is that you have to actually mean it when you pick up the 5-alarm fire token. You have to know in your heart that if you messed up, or if something’s not working properly, or if you can’t deliver on a promise you made: that IS a massive problem. That IS worth dropping everything else to fix.

While I think you could technically probably use this strategy in a more “manipulative sense” (ie. pretending to be outraged while really not caring,  just to get your customer to calm down), if the result is that you’re actually taking steps to soothe a distressed human being because of a stressor that you specifically or inadvertently caused, I think that’s probably a net positive. But I also think that it probably works better when you care. Energy doesn’t lie, and we can all feel when we’re being placated (just ask the Too Much Tuna guys!) or lied to.

This was a throwaway line on one podcast (it actually took me a very long time to find the link to the right one!) but it has stuck with me ever since. I’m still exploring where else this concept is true in my life and my relationships. When I feel guilty about something, do I pick up the careless token just to avoid taking responsibility? Do I avoid picking up the outraged token just because I want to seem cool, chill and in control? And most importantly, if I pick up one token, does the universe pick up another?