Two significant things I experienced this week were watching The Pursuit of Happyness movie with Will Smith, and attending a vedic meditation intro talk.

The movie made me feel extremely grateful for the life I have and how much people struggle to achieve a life with resources, privileges and comfort. It also made me appreciate the love and care given to me by my parents and their hard work in creating the life I have today. I was super inspired. However, it did spotlight getting a certain job as achieving happiness – I know that there were other levels to why this gave him happiness, security for his kid, comfort, resources – things that I can’t even imagine lacking – however it plays into the idea that if you get a certain job you will be happy/live a good life. I guess this is true to some level, however recently in my wellness research I’ve found that how you live your life, who you surround yourself with and other aspects are equally or as important to your happiness. Maybe this is only valid if you already have a starting point of comfort/resources. It is true that many of the articles/classes I have been taking are catered to people of higher class/comfortable status – maybe we need to reconsider what wellness means. So many don’t even have basic levels of comfort, maybe work multiple jobs in a day and have to wake up super early. How do we expect them to be able to fit meditating into their day as well? I guess this feeds into the larger question around the inequalities in relation to wellness. – and also what one views as achieving happiness. 

The Vedic Meditation talk I attended was through zoom. Going into it I thought we were going to be meditating but it was actually more of an informational session about the benefits of Vedic meditation and how the teacher came to the practice. The practice involves meditating 40 minutes a day, 20 minutes in the morning and 20 minutes in the afternoon. While the training course that this woman offered seemed overpriced to me, what she had to say brought a new perspective to the research I have previously done regarding meditation. For example, Vedic meditation does not use any apps or anything, it is simply you with your thoughts (and a mantra provided for you). This much meditation seems hard for everyday people to implement into their lives but then I thought about how much I’m on social media and a screen, and thought this is the best time to give it a try. Today, I meditated for 20 minutes and to be honest it was difficult. I kept thinking I accidentally didn’t start the timer on my phone and that I would be meditating for so long because the alarm wouldn’t go off. That was not the case and I am actually really proud of myself for not checking my phone and staying there with my thoughts. I don’t know if I could incorporate 40 minutes of meditating into a school routine such as college but maybe I will try it out for the rest of my senior project – I am also testing many meditation apps so we will see how I find a balance.