“I can only bring myself to sit down and meditate when I’m relaxed enough, in which case I don’t

need meditation.”

“Believe in whatever you wish to, but you can’t deny that meditation gives people comfort”.

“So does heroin. That doesn’t make it right.”

“But every now and then, when I sit in silence and hear distant sounds which I otherwise wouldn’t
have, I feel strangely empowered.”

“However, my momentary state of self-assuredness comes crashing down when the pseudo-logical
side of me smirks and says - ‘Yeah right, so breathing in and out is gonna solve your problems? It’s
just symbolism’.”

“And sometimes I find myself believing this voice. Maybe being a meditation freak is just a well-
disguised ploy to self-validate your state of well-being.”

“But I’ve got to admit, mental relaxation is a difficult art and science, its methods too nuanced to
even fathom.”

“I’ve tried a whole lot of semi-philosophical techniques myself, ranging from the more intuitive ones
like ‘One day we’re all going to die anyway, so just chill’ to the more abstract like fleshing out an
imaginary conjoined twin of mine who goes through the exact same challenges as me, enabling us to
serve as pillars of support for each other after every bad day’.

“But then again, if even deep breathing can’t stand up to my rational side, the conjoined twin isn’t
going to live a really long life either.”

“But why do I still experiment with these ideas then?”

“It’s something like this. People have pet dogs and claim that their pets lift their spirits whenever
they wag their tails or lick their masters’ faces. It will take a few more centuries before normal
people can actually understand dog language with a high degree of accuracy. The dog isn’t going to
help you with your nagging client or support your ailing relatives. But it still is an epitome of loyalty,
a mood enhancer, and simply a wonderful creation of nature. The fact that you can see it in three
dimensions, running, barking and chasing its tail in front of your eyes, allows you to believe that the
dog indeed exists and serves a purpose. Over time, you begin to roughly understand its signals and it
becomes more and more human in your eyes. Thus, by virtue of you being an animal lover, you have
successfully developed a well-functioning bond with your pet, without ever having to confirm what
an individual “woof” or “meow” really means.”

*rolls eyes* “Hellooowww? I’m a writer. I create all kinds of creatures all the time. Sure, they may
not be visible to your eyes, but they are sure are visible to mine. I don’t understand them either at
first, but as I imagine more scenarios with them, they begin to act in ways that even I couldn’t have
scripted. Granted, they aren’t going to speak to my boss for me either, but so isn’t your dog or your
meditative powers.”

“As an aside, I’m a computer science person too. I can always create a 3D simulation of my dear
conjoined twin if I need to.”

“Please understand that I am not against Ol’ Regular Deep Breathing. As I said, the benefits are too
complex for me to understand. I’m just trying to have a constructive discussion with myself (or
maybe with my conjoined twin :P), about whether there is an anti-mindfulness relaxation technique
to satisfy my inner cynic.”
“My point is, I’m always the key to solving my own problems. I don’t expect anyone else to do it for
me. What matters though, is your state of mind, because it can influence your problem-solving
competence. In an ideal world, everyone could have a database loaded in their brains, saying “If X is
the problem, perform action Y…” for every kind of problem, in which case it doesn’t matter if you’re
a wounded alcoholic or a spiritual preacher, because your mind always has clear instructions. It is
when our capacities are finite that we have to compartmentalize our memory efficiently and allow
only a negligible disk-swapping latency, giving the impression of near-infinite capacity.”

“So the only pertinent question here is – which technique will work better to optimize the use of a
person’s mental space?”

“Speaking to a person or a dog helps you see things that you might have missed when they were
stuck in your cramped mind.”

“Meditation perhaps helps you achieve the same by forcing you to focus solely on your insides or
solely on the surroundings, helping you to see clearer projections the same world on different axes.”

“It is quite easy to see why cynics don’t subscribe to the latter – it is too abstract and intangible to be
taken seriously without solid methods of proof.”

“But the problem with the former is that other real people and animals have an element of toxicity
attached to them, quite naturally so, because nobody is perfect.”

“Which is why imaginary friends are my best bet at the moment. They behave, speak and reason out
issues in ways which are familiar to me, and at the same time, I am not in danger of getting into a fist
fight with them.”