“Hyper-chondriac,” author and humorist Brian Frazer muses on why it’s so hard to sit still.
VIDEO TRANSCRIPT
I’ve always been hyper and high-strung so when I heard about an entire weekend of sitting still at a Buddhist temple, I considered the $80 price tag a bargain.
There was only one little hitch; it’s really really tough for me to sit still.
As I sat in the temple with about 100 other sitting-stillers, I was bored.
I made lists in my head – what I needed to buy, what I needed to do, who I needed to call.
Then I looked at my watch and figured a couple of hours had passed.
Six minutes had gone by! Six!
No wonder when you were bad in school the teacher made you go sit in a corner!
This stunk! So I left.
On the drive home I realized I had just paid $80 to sit for six minutes.
But to me that was a better deal than spending $80 to sit for seven minutes.
I began plotting my day – I’d grab lunch at the Kebab Palace, get my car washed, watch baseball – and I felt superior to the temple people who were all wasting their time – not moving, not thinking, not eating kebabs.
But as I sat at the car wash yapping on my cell phone while flipping through air-fresheners, I kinda wished I was still sitting still. Because my mind DID need a break.
The paradox is, until you put your brain on pause, you won’t realize how much it needed the vacation.
So now when I have to sit still and wait – for a doctor, or haircut, I just tack the time on to the six minutes from my sitting still weekend – I’m almost up to an hour now.