An empty hour

You would not eat from the moment you woke up until the moment you fell asleep. But that is what you do with input. Podcast on the walk. Phone in the queue. Screen in bed, screen at the table, screen on the toilet. The mind never gets an empty hour to digest any of it.

Meditation does not have to be a practice with an app and a cushion. It can just be a fast. Twenty minutes with nothing going in. Sit on the step. No phone, no music.

Around minute three you will feel something that seems like boredom. It is withdrawal. Sit through it, and somewhere after that the noise thins out, and under it is a voice you had half forgotten was yours.