Grant yourself a moment of peace,
and you will understand
how foolishly you have scurried about.
Learn to be silent,
and you will notice that
you have talked too much.
Be kind,
and you will realize that your
judgment of others was too severe.
ANONYMOUS
I began trying to share mindfulness with kids in my early twenties. I was an idealistic, or perhaps arrogant, recent college graduate who thought he was going to change the world by teaching kids mindfulness. It was soon apparent that the students, not to mention the staff, at the therapeutic boarding school where I was teaching had other ideas. After I switched careers and began graduate school in clinical psychology, part of me thought that my career would consist of forty-minute meditation sessions with clients, with ten minutes at the end where we would discuss how much closer we were getting to enlightenment thanks to me. (I’m barely kidding, by the way.) My delusion was broken when a world-weary fifteen-year-old looked at me and, with a deep sigh and eyes rolling back into his head, said, “Dr. Willard, breathing is played out.”
Creating and accepting new definitions of success has been one of the harder parts of the mindfulness journey for me. A mentor once told me, “In this work, we measure success with calipers, not yardsticks.” He also helped me understand that progress is not always linear—something in-laws, insurance companies, and educational policymakers don’t always understand. I’ve learned that with some of the most troubled kids, our job sometimes is not pulling them out of a downward slide or even stopping the downward slide, but just slowing the slide and being with them when they are down. No matter how much you or I think that the world’s young people need mindfulness, they may not be ready for it at this moment in their lives, no matter how fun we try to make it or how hard we sell it to schools and institutions.
In these times, we are left with only one student whom we can really influence: ourselves. Most of my best parenting, teaching, and clinical work has come out of the insights, wisdom, and compassion developed in my own practice and in my relationship with the kids I work with, not in tools or techniques I’ve thrown at them.
It’s now been a few years since I’ve worked as a therapist, and I still don’t get paid to sit and meditate for more than a few minutes out of my fifty-minute sessions or the workshops I lead. I’m still not enlightened, and frankly, those around me look a lot closer to enlightenment than I do. My work looks different from what I envisioned long ago. Sometimes it looks like two people quietly practicing together. More often, however, it looks like me trying to maintain and model mindfulness in a room swirling with emotion. Your mileage may vary, as the commercials say. In all likelihood, your practices with kids will look something like what you’ve read in this book, but have a lot more of you, your setting, and your kids in the words and in the implementation.
When I was practicing metta a few years ago, it occurred to me, with a mixture of excitement and fear, that I might be a benefactor in someone’s life. We know that the best predictor of resilience in a child’s life is to have one adult who is there for them, who believes in them unconditionally. For some child, that might be me. What a great privilege—and a great responsibility.
Thich Nhat Hanh tells a story describing the importance of mindfulness in a traumatized community.
In Vietnam there are many people, called boat people, who leave the country in small boats. Often the boats are caught in rough seas or storms, the people may panic, and boats can sink. But if even one person aboard can remain calm, lucid, knowing what to do and what not to do, he or she can help the boat survive. His or her expression—face, voice—communicates clarity and calmness, and people have trust in that person. They will listen to what he or she says. One such person can save the lives of many.1
Are you willing to be that calm person in the boat with your kids—or with other kids in your kids’ school, or in your workplace, your family, your community? If so, put down this book, come fully into the present moment with acceptance and nonjudgment, and begin from here.
May all beings be at peace.