I'm not disagreeing with you. At the end of the day I'm probably not even disagreeing with the message the author wants to convey. I'm just disagreeing with his

I'm not disagreeing with you. At the end of the day I'm probably not even disagreeing with the message the author wants to convey. I'm just disagreeing with his rhetoric, and I find that philosophically and psychologically vital. -- I've meditated before. I've done it for many hours a week for several weeks in a row. Then I realized I totally agree with davidw's comment here that exercise often does just as good a job without being fucking boring. Backpacking. You. Just. Walk. (Through beautiful terrible landscapes that you might actively enjoy for a while but will later become a part of literally and spiritually.) Backpacking. It. Fucking. Hurts. A lot. All day long. All night long. You mentally scream at yourself for deciding to pack each and every single piece of extraneoitivity you're carrying on your back. Each ounce. You curse the world for every stair step up the mountain. Then it all fades into the back of your mind like raining white noise. It's cathartic terrible screaming total peace. And next thing you enjoy it. I'm not saying you, generalized, should meditate or backpack. I'm not saying they're the cure for what ails you, let alone what ails the human condition at large. I'm pretty convinced that if you don't feel like you'd enjoy either one of them then practicing one will transform you positively, but I'd never say that exclusively. But yeah, please do keep telling people to try meditation. I will too. My only beef is when you try to help them decide by pumping them full of psychological sympathy triggers.