NY Times, March 23, 2014: “In an industry in which grueling schedules are embraced as a badge of honor, efforts to promote work-life balance reflect a significant change in corporate culture.” http://nyti.ms/1dDWpfA

A close friend, a NY Times subscriber, periodically sends me ‘teasers’ about articles in the paper. When this one arrived in late March, I immediately jumped to the wrong conclusion. After all, after several months of patient, painstaking work, my thesis students had just emerged from Spring Break in full-blown panic mode. It was go-go-go: finish your experiments and calculations, prepare and deliver your public seminar, write-format-defend your thesis. Go! At the same time, the juniors in our department had begun a group anxiety attack: the Qual. Faculty like me, caught between senior angst and the administration of a record number of junior quals, were having attacks of our own. Work was everywhere. Sleep? Rest? Not to be found. Thus, when the Times email appeared, I paused for a brief moment and asked myself, had the nation’s Paper of Record become concerned about the over-the-top, caffeine-supercharged lifestyles of the Reed community?

That thought lasted only a moment. The next flicker of thought reminded me that modern society is filled with workers who believe they can’t stop working. Workers who wear supercharged lifestyles as a proof of self-worth, as a badge of honor. The article could have been about academics, but surely the Times was writing about some other career?

All of which brings me to meditation. There is no work ‘product’ in mindfulness meditation. No doing. No honor. No badge. Just being aware. This sitting we do is completely subversive.

Subvert the Dominant Paradigm! Meditate!