I'll Get Back to You

The Most Valuable Lesson I Ever Learned

The most valuable lesson I ever learned about meditation, I learned from one of my students.

I was teaching a meditation class in an assisted living community. My average age student was ninety. Lots of my students were cranky, but to be fair, they were struggling with health challenges and physical pain. Finding a convenient spot to stash a walker or rollator was a cutthroat activity.

June was less impaired than the average student. No hearing aids, walker or oxygen tank, yet she often entered the classroom with a complaint.

• “The air conditioner unit squeaks. I can’t concentrate!”

• “The custodian is a nice guy, but does he have to vacuum during every class session?”

• “What is so important these people can’t silence their phones for 45 minutes?”

She was right about all of it, but it was all beyond my control since the “classroom” was actually a hallway connecting two wings of the building, a main thoroughfare for maintenance workers and delivery people. Since there were no doors to close, there was no way to block out the noisy buzzing and whirring of machines operated by the cleaning or repair staff. There was also the challenge of a roomful of 90-year-olds with mobile phones they had no idea how to silence.

Each week I’d concentrate on a specific meditation topic: thoughts, worries, focus. That day’s theme was the wisdom pause, the idea of there being a benefit to intentionally placing a beat between what’s provoking you and your response.

I related a story about how I’d recently met a young woman, a very busy attorney with a young child and a dog and the whole catastrophe. I told her I was also a lawyer and sometimes teach lawyers to meditate. She laughed and told me how someone talked her into taking a yoga class which she really hated. But while she was lying in shavasana, the final pose in a yoga class where you simply lie flat on the floor for several minutes without doing anything, she was thinking about how much she hated being still and it was then she realized she really missed playing tennis and slamming a ball across the court with all her strength. While lying there doing nothing, she resolved she would schedule some tennis lessons.

“Her takeaway was that she hated being still so much she wanted to do just the opposite. My takeaway was different. I think that when she forced herself to be still for a moment, she realized what she really wanted in her life.”

The air conditioner switched on with a roar and several of the ladies stretched into sweaters hung from the backs of their chairs and wheelchairs.

I tried again. “Learning to slow down can often teach you to respond instead of react.”

June looked skeptical but she always looked skeptical.

As per usual, we did a breathing exercise and a body scan and then I guided the class through a silent meditation. There were the usual snores and one unsilenced 1812 Overture phone chime, but everyone was able to follow my instructions and sit in silence.

Several people stayed after class to tell me how much they enjoyed practicing meditation, but June never lingered after class for small talk like the others. She always seemed like she had something more important to do.

The following week, when June approached me before class, I was expecting a complaint about the temperature of the room or the ways the overhead lights flickered, but there was something else on her mind. It turns out despite June’s contentious personality, she is a quick study.

“Lori, remember last week we discussed the idea of pausing for a moment before responding?”

Feeling smug, I nodded.

“Well, yesterday when someone asked me to do something,” June circled her wrist with a flourish, “I said— I’ll get back to you.”

Mic drop.

So pithy, so correct.

Plus, it never occurred to me that someone as outspoken as June could ever be put on the spot by anyone. It turns out that even assertive people need practice pressing the pause button.