Why do we need meditation in our busy lives and how can it keep our brains healthy?

In the modern world, busyness is considered a virtue, but it can lead to brain fatigue and health problems. Let’s explore how to recharge your brain and increase its efficiency through meditation.

 

We’ve all heard the phrase “Pay attention!” from a teacher in school. We’ve become a society where doing as much as possible in a given amount of time is recognized as a skill. We don’t want to waste a single minute, so when we see ourselves standing still doing nothing, we ask ourselves, “What am I doing?” So we keep stimulating our brain without giving it a break. We listen to music in our earphones and get information from our screens at the same time, and we spend our days constantly focusing on something. At the end of the day, we look back at how busy we’ve been, feel proud of ourselves, and go to sleep. In an age that favors busyness, meditating has become unacceptable. Even time spent in meditation has become time wasted, and meditators are seen as idle time killers.
But is it always good to be busy? We should all ask ourselves this question at least once in a while. What is truly important in our lives? Isn’t it more important to do something meaningful, not just to accomplish a lot of things? Modern society demands that we constantly compete and perform. Are we missing out on our true happiness and satisfaction in this environment?
Our brains are becoming increasingly exhausted. Multitasking and constantly running without rest is causing our frontal lobe function to decline and our judgment to become clouded, leading to impulsive decisions. The prevalence of insomnia and stress-related illnesses in the modern world is an example of this. We are constantly whipping our brains to produce better results than others, but at the same time, our brains are dying. So how can we keep our brains healthy?
A recent study offers an interesting answer. It turns out that the simplest and easiest way to protect your brain is to meditate. According to the study, the human brain has a “default value”: when we meditate, it goes into default mode and activates the medial prefrontal lobe. Conversely, when we inject new information into the brain, the medial prefrontal lobe becomes less active and the neural circuitry is activated by focusing on the task at hand. Normally, the basal and active values are balanced, but when too much information is introduced, the brain becomes overloaded and cannot return to the basal value. Therefore, meditation rests the tired brain, and afterward, the brain is able to transmit information better than before.
The benefits of meditation are also scientifically proven. For example, meditation helps boost creativity. This is because when we’re not preoccupied with something, the brain is able to combine free-floating thoughts to create new ideas. Meditation also reduces stress and reverses mental fatigue. This is a very important factor in maintaining our mental health.
At some point, busyness became a virtue for us. “Are you still busy?” This phrase, along with “How are you?”, is often used in Korean society as a greeting. This phrase implies that being busy is a good thing. It implies that being busy is a good thing, and we tacitly approve of the idea that if you’re not busy, you’re out of place and useless in society. This is why people do things to stay busy, or to appear busy, even if they don’t have a specific purpose. Busyness is not just a state of being to reach some goal, but rather a value to be pursued in itself.
In a society where busyness has become a virtue, we are ashamed of ourselves for not being busy. But busyness shouldn’t be the goal of our lives. It’s a means to an end, not an end in itself. What matters to us is the accomplishment and satisfaction we get from our busyness, so we need to dive into meditation from time to time to feel truly fulfilled. It’s not just a time to rest, it’s a time to recharge our brains and prepare them for better performance.
We all want to be busy, but it should be the kind of busy that allows us to perform at our best. Take a little time out of your day to meditate. The brief respite you give your brain will help you be a little more efficient in your busyness. What we all really want is not just busyness, but meaningful fulfillment and happiness. It’s time to realize the importance of meditation and find ways to keep our brains and minds healthy.