And Just Breathe.....
Election meditations
Feeling stressed? GIRL SAME. Here are some meditations to help you through these next few days. Remember to vote! You don’t need your easy vote card or ID and you don’t have to be enrolled. Just rock up. Right now! OK, maybe after you’ve read these then. (Find your nearest voting place here).
You are a six-month-old baby. You do not understand object permanence. For a brief second your mother disappears behind her hands, but before your soul can become filled with terror, she reappears. She says PEEK A BOO and you cannot explain it, but this is the funniest thing that has ever happened to you in your short life. Laughter erupts from you and the noise you make is pure joy. This too makes you laugh harder. All you can feel is delight and warmth. Your mother holds you, she too is laughing. She presses her nose to yours and you’ve never felt so safe and loved.
Channing Tatum is your boyfriend. He is reading a Buzzfeed listicle of ‘fun facts’. He yells out facts in a voice full of surprise and wonder. “Babe! Babe! Clams have feet!”. He is wearing Spongebob Pyjama Pants and you can see the the deep line where his lower abs and obliques meet. “HOLY SHIT!” he yells. He comes bounding over to you like a labrador on speed. “Every c in the Pacific Ocean is pronounced differently!” He tries to count the Cs in Pacific Ocean but keeps getting confused. His perfect jawline clenches and unclenches. His beautiful face sits in its natural resting state of mild confusion. He gives up on trying to figure out how many cs are in Pacific Ocean. He leans over you and says “the world blows my mind every day! Like wow you know?!” He kisses you on the forehead and says “I’m gonna do a few laps in the pool and then let’s fuck yeah? 20 minutes! Yeow!” You smile and return to watching the Beckham documentary. There’s 19 minutes left of this episode.
You are a koala in a tree, munching on eucalyptus leaves. Unlike your cousins, you are not ravaged by chlamydia. You fear nothing. You have no enemies. You live in a zoo. You have as many leaves as you want. You are never bothered. You listen to tourists whisper about how cute you are in reverent voices. “Yes” you think to yourself. “I am the cutest animal in this zoo”. You spend 18-22 hours of your day sleeping.
You are at a car show with Vin Diesel. He is wearing a tee shirt he made himself that says: Vin Diesel Loves Cars. Every car he sees he acts like it is the first car he has ever seen. He is so happy. So enthusiastic about his adoration of cars that you start to feel carried away by it all. You listen to him passionately talk about mufflers. He loves cars so deeply, so unashamedly, there is such appreciation for them. He breathlessly tells you about the Hyundai Ioniq 6 without a hint of self-consciousness. It is the second model from Hyundai’s dedicated all-electric sub-brand. You do not care. But his eyes brim with tears as he tells you that the aerodynamic Ioniq 6 has a drag coefficient of just 0.21, parlaying its 77.4-kWh battery capacity into a range of nearly 600 km (379 miles) on a single charge. When you truly love something, all artifice melts away, and what is left is pure humanity. Vin Diesel loves cars. You love his love and the love we all have for that which brings us peace and comfort in trying and troubling times.
You are a burrito. You are wrapped tight and surrounded by tin foil, perfectly encased - toasty and delicious. You are the perfect combination of cheese, beans, quac, rice, red onion, corn and bell pepper, surrounded by a perfectly soft flour tortilla. You are about to be eaten but you do not fear it. This is not a death, it is your life’s purpose. You were made for this and it’s your greatest hope to be devoured in this way. You can hear laughter and music. You will be consumed and shared among friends who will remember this night forever.
It’s the first day of “Fall”. You are Lenny Kravitz and you are leaving the house. You reach your door then remember. You stop. You turn around and head back upstairs and you enter your walk-in wardrobe. You walk past the hundreds of leather pants you own. You know what you need. You need your giant scarf. You find it hanging behind some more leather pants. It is brown. Enormous. Comically large. You heave it out of the wardobe. It is incredible impractical but you know that it brings happiness to others. They see you in the scarf and at first they think “what the fuck is that guy wearing? Is it a blanket?”. Their minds race: “Why would you make a scarf that big?” Then they look closer and see it’s you, Lenny Kravitz. Sometimes they say “Fuck! It’s Lenny Kravitz!” Other times they say “Is that you? Lenny Kravitz”. You smile beatifically upon them. “Yes, I’m Lenny Kravitz,” you say gently. You touch their forehead, blessing them: “And this is my big fucking scarf”.
You are a Greenland Shark. Also known as Somniosus microcephalus. Your species is older than America. You have cruised the icy depths slowly and carefully for 150 years. You will live for another 200 years at least. Maybe even another 400 years. Your kind has seen cities rise and fall, borders change, countries form and die - you have seen so much war waged above the sea and so much kindness and gentleness in humanity’s hope for repair. You have seen humans in all of their beauty and folly and horror and arrogance. You have never attacked a human despite their attacks on you. You are time itself. You were here before them and you will be here after them. You are made mostly of piss. At 150 years old, you have finally reached sexual maturity. You are down to fuck.
The year is 1972. You are 12 years-old. You are on the verge of teenage-hood. You straddle a line between child and adolescent. Today, you are not thinking of your future or past. It is Christmas Day and your parents have just handed you your gift. You know that you have asked for only one thing and by the shape and size of the package and the expectant grins of your olds’ that you finally have it. You rip the packaging open in a flourish and there it is: Sea Monkeys. You know the comic book ad by heart ‘the world-famous test-tube pets created by science!’. You leap into the arms of your parents and they hold you tight. Your mother nuzzles her face into the space behind your ear and you know somehow that she’s thinking of the day you were born. In your hands you hold instant life. In her hands she is remembering when she held you, and her life changed in an instant. You break the hug reluctantly and it feels like something within you has changed - you feel responsible, careful….older? You are responsible now for your sea monkeys. This realisation fills you with gratitude and purpose. You feel lucky. And you hope you can make your sea monkeys feel as safe, secure and loved as you do in this moment.
The voter turn-out is the highest it has ever been. People queued for hours to vote. There was no complaining - just waves of gratitude spreading across the motu. In the greatest numbers on record, New Zealand voted. It is a landslide victory for the planet. Care, compassion, courage is written on every ballot. The world is surprised, opinion pieces are written in their thousands trying to explain how our little country chose so overwhelmingly to protect the Earth and each other. We smile at each other in the street, we know we are powerful - that we have more in common than what divides us. We will heal, together. Everything will be OK.
You’re an author and you publish a list of election meditations. The comments start flooding in. So too so the Substack subscriptions - word is spreading. You start writing more meditations. You record an audiobook of guided meditations and people do not stop buying it. There’s so much money in your bank account that you can afford to hire a driver so you never have to worry about kissing other cars with your car or leaving your keys in places. Our entire society is based on your meditations. Mental health statistics improve across the motu and you’re nominated for Nobel Prizes in literature, medicine AND peace.
I really needed this, thank you. I still can't find a local candidate who I can stand to vote for 😖
I need a meditation like, "it's four days before election day. You've been struggling to choose a local candidate, but then you hear a knock at the door. It's (insert your favourite retired politician here), and they've brought coffee and muffins. They smile and say, "I've come back to represent your local area because I've heard the other candidates are a bit shit. Everyone says they're going to vote for me." You cry and hug them and eat muffins before walking to the advanced polling area, confident that your vote will matter.