Reflection #7: Meditation and Friendships

Part 1: I may have mentioned earlier in the class that my NaNa (my grandmother) is a very free spirited individual who loved to meditate daily to clear her mind. Lucky for me, I was able to do this activity with her over break when I went to visit. Upon doing the activity, I have to confess that I am a disbeliever in a lot of things and I do not find myself religious what so ever. However, I do find myself a very spiritual person mainly because of my grandmother who helped me put aside my lack of religion to and find something else that I can believe in. So I already have done the meditating exercise before, so it was not something new to me. After the exercise, I felt more relaxed and calm which is something I generally feel after I have vented to someone about something that has been bothering me. For me, meditation is more a time where I can vent to myself in my head and clear my thoughts. I hope to do this more often because as I begin to transfer into the “real” world, I will need something to help me out and is something I can do on my own without having to depend on someone. For me, both activities mended together into one meditations session, in which I was able to do both the silent hum meditation and experiencing smells through my mind. The second part was rather hard to do because my grandmother’s dog kept coming over and breathing in my face, but I pretty much go the point. Usually people, including myself at one point, push these activities aside because they may seem dumb. But, really they are not, especially when people do other things do get the exact same results that meditation brings. You do not need to just meditate to find yourself or to bring yourself down to earth, you can do whatever you find fun that takes things off your mind and lets your relax. I have several things I do to relax and calm down, but meditation is just one of them. I strongly recommended these activities to people just to give it a shot.

Part 2:

I would say for a majority of my friendships I have would fall under the category of Utility relationships. If you have known me well, you can tell that I like to do business and get things done accordingly. I live a life where I run by schedules and independently living my life with the help of only a very select few. Through my life, most of my friends remain in the utility category, where we worked together in academic clubs, summer jobs, and set building for theatre. We were in the job together to accomplish the goal and we would only really connect in the environment. Outside of that space, we would just acknowledge each other, but we really never would hang out. My best friends from home and school are the friends I hang out with and have fun doing random things. These friendships clearly fall under the category of pleasure, because we genuinely enjoy the time we spend together. This area includes my parents as well as my girlfriend, where despite the times we want to pull our hair out, we still enjoy being around one another. When I think of seeing one of my current relationships become to the level of virtue, I can pick out 2 that I know could get there. The relationships would both be coming from the level of pleasure, where we would already know one another inside and out, how we think, how we act, and etc. The conditions really would be the same as they are now, because I feel both friendships already mean a great deal to me, we help each other without the thought of a reward, and we genuinely care for the well-being of each other. The only condition I can think of would be that we would have to be out of college and into the real world to actually move into the level of virtue.