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A recent incident of youth violence, like a blunt knife, has opened a wound on people’s hearts that is difficult to heal. In the Feixiang District of Handan City, Hebei Province, at Jiu Dian Middle School, three boys under the age of 14 maliciously collaborated to kill their classmate, Xiao Ming (pseudonym), in a shockingly brutal manner.
On the day Xiao Ming was laid to rest, his father shared a grief-filled message on social media: “I remember the first time I took you to see the ocean, how much you loved it. Since then, every summer vacation, I would take you to the sea, and we enjoyed that parent-child time together happily. Now, it all seems like a dream; I can no longer take you to see the ocean, my child…” Xiao Ming lived with his grandparents since childhood, and although he was often far from his father who worked away from home, they still enjoyed warm summer vacations together.
Xiao Ming, an upright and honest child, had often expressed to his father and aunt the thought of not wanting to continue his education. He frequently asked for pocket money at home, but the adults never thought deeply about it, believing he just liked to eat snacks. It wasn’t until spring that he strongly expressed his unwillingness to go to school, but perhaps his elder family members did not realize that this was a cry for help from the child.
The occurrence of this tragedy has sparked concern among many divorced parents, who are reflecting on whether their own divorces might affect their children. Online, opinions vary; some people believe that single-parent families should not shoulder the blame for this incident, and that it was the fault of those three children. There are also voices pointing out that examples like Gu Ailing and Wang Shiling show that children from single-parent families can also excel. Others suggest that, precisely because Xiao Ming came from a single-parent household and lacked parental companionship, he might have been more susceptible to bullying.
Although we recognize that children like Gu Ailing and Wang Shiling, who come from single-parent families, still receive maternal affection and have adequate material conditions, for most single-parent families, there indeed may be insufficiencies in material resources and personal time and energy, which substantially affect the growing child. What’s important is not whether the family structure is intact, but the parents’ continuous attention to their children, and even if they cannot always be by their side, to find other ways to establish close bonds with them, delve into the children’s inner worlds, allowing them to share their inner confusions and feel a sense of emotional security. For many families who have to work long hours or are divorced, mastering communication skills with children and establishing deep parent-child relationships becomes particularly vital.
To establish good communication with children and family, one must first have a high-quality conversation with oneself. When our mental energy is low, interactions with others are often challenging. Many people live under immense stress in their daily lives; their minds are cluttered. They may be attentive to their children and family, yet fail to truly understand their inner worlds. This is a common challenge: How can we communicate effectively with others when our own issues remain unresolved?
Meditation is a process that helps individuals organize their inner thoughts and enhance their mental and physical energy. Through meditation, we can change our state of mind, achieving inner peace. Imagine the brain as a computer’s CPU; meditation helps us clear the memory and upgrade the system. The brain often uses old patterns of thinking to predict the future but struggles with the present. Meditation allows us to be present with our thoughts and trains our brain to avoid distractions, thus releasing the feelings of insecurity within us. Research shows that “meditation can reduce the grip of negative emotions, improve focus and memory, reduce impulsive reactions, improve interpersonal relationships, and keep the practitioner’s consciousness in the present moment.”
How to meditate? Here are some steps:
- Choose the right environment: When meditating, you need a quiet, comfortable space free from distractions, away from noise and well-organized, to assist in concentrating.
- Prepare meditation tools: Meditation music, mats, and comfortable cushions can be used to aid the process. Initially, these tools help us enter a meditative state more quickly, but they may become unnecessary as we deepen our practice.
- Find a meditation posture that suits you: A comfortable sitting posture helps us focus our spirit and internal energy. You can choose positions like the simple cross-legged, hero pose, vajrasana, lotus, or perfect pose. Keep your spine straight, shoulders relaxed, and avoid leaning forward when sitting.
- Adjust your breathing: Breathing is crucial to the quality of meditation. By regulating the rhythm of your breath, you can calm the mind. Inhale away tension and stress, and exhale to discard negative emotions. Focus on your breath and imagine with each breath, you become more relaxed.
- Begin to meditate: After preparing, focus on your breathing. Count your inhales and exhales up to ten, and then restart. In the beginning, you will notice many thoughts passing through your mind. During meditation, feel the pressure within easing and your mindset becoming more peaceful and tolerant.
After maintaining meditation for a period, you may find that not only during your actual practice but also outside of your meditation time, you can gradually experience that sense of calm and clarity. Initially, when caught in the whirlpool of negative emotions like anger, despair, and insomnia, we may not understand their real causes. However, as we delve deeper into our practice of meditation, we gradually learn to see the mysteries of the mind and understand the deeper factors behind these emotional fluctuations.
Persisting in daily meditation is like adding a calibrator to our inner self, allowing us a profound understanding of our own feelings and thoughts, thus creating a virtuous cycle of living. Initially, we may need to focus on counting breaths to concentrate, but over time, we can enter the meditative state more easily, with distractions gradually lessening, allowing us to sit in peace, feeling every sensation in our body and mind, dispelling layers of worries, and returning to inner tranquility.
In the practice of meditation, one should not expect significant changes to occur overnight. It is a process that requires long-term commitment and the accumulation of experience. Even if at times the experience of meditation does not meet expectations, there is no need to be discouraged. Accept the ups and downs in practice, as each meditation session is an opportunity to adjust your mindset and enhance self-awareness. With perseverance, satisfying results from meditation will eventually be harvested.
Meditation is not merely a concept but a state that can only be truly understood through personal experience. This is also where the challenge lies—most people have never deeply felt the relaxation and clarity that meditation can bring. Thus, in the beginning, we need to practice continually and explore gradually until we personally experience the profound changes that meditation brings to us.
