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</a>, once our safety and survival are taken care of, we turn our attention to the things which give us a sense of purpose. We look for things which make us feel that we matter. Things that prove we’re here on Earth for a purpose.</p><p id="7111">Political activism, looking after a pet, writing blog posts on Medium, we do these things to make the world a better place in some large or small way, and in doing so we prove to ourselves and the people around us that we have value. That’s not to say that our reasons are entirely selfish, just that the personal affirmation we get from this category of behaviours is a factor in our decision to do them.</p><h1 id="1297">Pleasure</h1><p id="5e1e">There are lots of things that we do for pleasure. We spend time with our friends, we eat ice cream, we watch movies, we eat pizza, we play games, we eat chocolate…you get the idea. We eat and sometimes we do other stuff.</p><p id="4b53">But our search for pleasure isn’t just about the things we do to feel good, but the things we do to limit feeling bad. Here we can include things like alcohol and drug abuse, lying, even petty behaviour like putting others down to make ourselves feel better. As with safety, a lot of things fit into this category which don’t seem to fit until you consider the reasons behind them.</p><h1 id="a2bb">Just because</h1><p id="c417">This category might seem like a cop-out. A sort of catch-all for anything that slips through the cracks left by the others. But it’s just the opposite. “Just because” is by far the most stringent category. Hardly anything belongs in it because there’s hardly anything that we do purely for the sake of doing it.</p><p id="508b">Things that we do “just because”, aren’t done for any reward other than the doing of them. We don’t do them because they lead to anything, or because we gain anything from them in the long term, or because of anything at all. We do them be

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cause. Period.</p><p id="0a29">Things that fall into this category include dancing, or listening to music, or going for a long walk. There’s no grand purpose to any of these things. They don’t help us to survive or make us feel important or make us more attractive (except for any particularly good dancers out there). We just do them, and the act of doing them is also the reward.</p><h1 id="6c1f">The point of pointless things</h1><p id="0e6d">Turning things we do “just because” into things we did for some external goal would defeat the object of doing them. Would singing in the shower be as liberating if you had to gain the approval of a panel of judges? Would you be able to dance like nobody was watching if you had to follow prearranged steps? Would a walk in nature be as life-affirming if you had to achieve something before you returned?</p><p id="7fcf">Meditation is the same way. Meditation <i>can’t</i> be done for some particular purpose, because if you’re meditating to achieve a goal then you’re not meditating. After all, if your mind is fixed on a result you’re hoping for in the future, how can it be in the present with the rest of you?</p><p id="ed35">The beauty of meditation, like dancing, like singing, like watching a sunset, is that it serves no purpose. There’s no plan, no destination, no way to get it wrong. Meditation is simply experiencing whatever’s happening at that moment. If it’s bliss, fine. If it’s anxiety, fine. If it’s changing, fine.</p><p id="1f9c">Survival, pleasure, boosting our self-esteem, these aren’t reasons to meditate. They’re reasons for many of the things we do, as they should be, but they can only act as obstacles to meditation. Meditation isn’t a cure for anxiety, or a key to happiness, or a pathway to spiritual superiority. So much of what we do has to serve a purpose. There should be at least one thing in our lives that we do just because.</p></article></body>

3 Reasons Why You Shouldn’t Meditate

And one reason why you should

There are — obviously — many reasons why we do the things we do, but all of them can be placed into one of four categories: safety, self-esteem, pleasure and “just because”. These categories define what we hope to gain from whatever it is we’re doing and what need it is they’re serving so let’s look at each in turn briefly:

Safety

If I turn my cynicism dial up to eleven, I can make a good case that at least fifty per cent of what we do is just a survival mechanism. There’s eating and sleeping. There’s work, which pays for food and a place to sleep. There are friends, who help us in times of need and give us social contact so we don’t lose our minds. We have children so that our genes and our wisdom (such as it is) will survive our death.

I warned you that it was a cynical way to look at the world, but it’s also true. If human beings didn’t die or get sick, how likely is it that we’d worry about any of these things?

Safety can also refer to our emotional safety, and things get complicated here. All kinds of seemingly counterintuitive behaviours can be explained by our need to feel that we’re safe and that we’re on familiar ground.

Self-esteem

As Abraham Maslow pointed out, once our safety and survival are taken care of, we turn our attention to the things which give us a sense of purpose. We look for things which make us feel that we matter. Things that prove we’re here on Earth for a purpose.

Political activism, looking after a pet, writing blog posts on Medium, we do these things to make the world a better place in some large or small way, and in doing so we prove to ourselves and the people around us that we have value. That’s not to say that our reasons are entirely selfish, just that the personal affirmation we get from this category of behaviours is a factor in our decision to do them.

Pleasure

There are lots of things that we do for pleasure. We spend time with our friends, we eat ice cream, we watch movies, we eat pizza, we play games, we eat chocolate…you get the idea. We eat and sometimes we do other stuff.

But our search for pleasure isn’t just about the things we do to feel good, but the things we do to limit feeling bad. Here we can include things like alcohol and drug abuse, lying, even petty behaviour like putting others down to make ourselves feel better. As with safety, a lot of things fit into this category which don’t seem to fit until you consider the reasons behind them.

Just because

This category might seem like a cop-out. A sort of catch-all for anything that slips through the cracks left by the others. But it’s just the opposite. “Just because” is by far the most stringent category. Hardly anything belongs in it because there’s hardly anything that we do purely for the sake of doing it.

Things that we do “just because”, aren’t done for any reward other than the doing of them. We don’t do them because they lead to anything, or because we gain anything from them in the long term, or because of anything at all. We do them because. Period.

Things that fall into this category include dancing, or listening to music, or going for a long walk. There’s no grand purpose to any of these things. They don’t help us to survive or make us feel important or make us more attractive (except for any particularly good dancers out there). We just do them, and the act of doing them is also the reward.

The point of pointless things

Turning things we do “just because” into things we did for some external goal would defeat the object of doing them. Would singing in the shower be as liberating if you had to gain the approval of a panel of judges? Would you be able to dance like nobody was watching if you had to follow prearranged steps? Would a walk in nature be as life-affirming if you had to achieve something before you returned?

Meditation is the same way. Meditation can’t be done for some particular purpose, because if you’re meditating to achieve a goal then you’re not meditating. After all, if your mind is fixed on a result you’re hoping for in the future, how can it be in the present with the rest of you?

The beauty of meditation, like dancing, like singing, like watching a sunset, is that it serves no purpose. There’s no plan, no destination, no way to get it wrong. Meditation is simply experiencing whatever’s happening at that moment. If it’s bliss, fine. If it’s anxiety, fine. If it’s changing, fine.

Survival, pleasure, boosting our self-esteem, these aren’t reasons to meditate. They’re reasons for many of the things we do, as they should be, but they can only act as obstacles to meditation. Meditation isn’t a cure for anxiety, or a key to happiness, or a pathway to spiritual superiority. So much of what we do has to serve a purpose. There should be at least one thing in our lives that we do just because.