Too Truthful for Meditation Circle

The Chicken Sandwich Incident

Oh baby, I’m so granola I’m crunchy.

Sort of.

The truth is that I dabble in holistic living from time to time, usually until I discover just how impractical whatever I’m doing actually is. At that point, I quietly abandon the trend and wait for the next wellness bandwagon to come rolling along.

“Presentness”? Tried it.

Hot yoga? Tried that too. Nearly gave myself heatstroke.

Free bleeding? Let’s just say there are places where I am no longer particularly welcome. Looking at you, co-op.

Still, repeated failure has never stopped me from pursuing the possibility that the next wellness trend will finally transform me into one of those serene people who drinks something green in the morning and owns matching glass storage containers.

So, when my employer’s health insurance offered to pay for a meditation class, I was delighted. Why wouldn’t I sacrifice a few late afternoons in pursuit of inner peace when someone else was footing the bill?

This is why it didn’t last long.

The studio was lovely. The floors looked new, the walls had recently been painted, and everything appeared to have been arranged by someone deeply opposed to clutter. The class itself was equally organized.

The people were another matter.

Everyone seemed to know one another except me. I arrived wearing black leggings and a Metallica T-shirt. Everyone else appeared to be dressed in hand-dyed organic cotton harvested during a full moon.

As an adult, none of my actual friends had the time, money, or inclination to join me in this frivolous pursuit, so I had to endure the uncomfortable experience of entering an established social group without the security blanket of knowing anyone.

Each class followed roughly the same routine: opening breathing exercises, stretches, and finally a meditation circle in which participants were encouraged to interact with one another.

In practical terms, the class consisted mostly of light stretching and people overtly checking themselves out in the studio’s mirrored walls for an hour.

The meditation circle was where things became interesting.

The questions changed every week, but they were always equally bland.

“What do you think of world peace?”

“What was the happiest time in your life?”

Nothing particularly challenging ever came up. The questions rarely ventured beyond the intellectual territory of a beauty-pageant interview.

The answers, however, were magnificent.

Every participant seemed to deliver a highly dramatic response, as though the meditation circle were actually a humanity exam and failure to demonstrate sufficient compassion would result in immediate banishment from the island.

For my first few classes, I was largely ignored.

I am invisible to the self-indulgent.

Then came the afternoon when someone finally asked me a question.

Unfortunately for everyone involved, I had skipped lunch that day because I had been at the courthouse disputing a parking ticket.

I lost, by the way.

By the time I arrived at meditation, I was hungry, irritated, and profoundly uninterested in achieving enlightenment. I attended anyway, mostly out of stubbornness.

Perhaps someone noticed the expression on my face because, when the meditation circle reached me, my question was:

“What would make you the happiest?”

I understood the assignment.

The socially appropriate response was something noble. A cure for cancer. An end to climate change. Peace for all humanity.

But I am an honest person.

And at that particular moment, after losing a parking-ticket dispute and missing lunch, there was exactly one thing in this universe that would have brought me genuine happiness.

“A chicken sandwich,” I said.

The room audibly gasped.

I should probably mention that everyone else in the class was vegan.

I was not.

For a moment, you would have thought I had answered the question by requesting the immediate collapse of civilization.

The class ended shortly afterward, and as everyone filed out, I received more than a few disapproving looks.

I went back once more because, despite everything, the exercise portion wasn’t bad. But the atmosphere had changed. People avoided me with such determination that an outside observer might have assumed I was contagious.

Apparently, I was.

My condition was chicken-sandwich consumption.

The attitude was almost as though exposure to me might serve as a gateway drug to an entirely different lifestyle. First you tolerate the woman who eats chicken sandwiches. Next thing you know, you’re buying a giant pickup truck and questioning whether your reusable grocery bags are really bringing you joy.

The funny thing is that this sort of rejection probably would have devastated me in middle school. As an adult, however, I had finally learned something considerably more useful than anything taught in that meditation circle:

You cannot make everyone happy, and trying to do so is exhausting.

I wanted a chicken sandwich. They wanted enlightenment.

We simply had different journeys.

So I moved on without much difficulty and left the meditation class behind.

I did, however, gain one piece of survival knowledge from the experience.

If civilization ever collapses and you find yourself surrounded by an angry mob of particularly militant wellness enthusiasts, hold up a chicken sandwich.

Apparently, it creates an effective defensive perimeter.