Silence and Patience

We've been practicing meditation a lot. Each time I've found it relaxing and liberating. In complete silence, free of all distractions, just able to be. I get so exhausted with day-to-day affairs. I cherish almost every moment where I have no obligations to doing anything, to think anything, to talk to anyone.

For some reason, it wasn't like that last Friday.

For the first few minutes, I was fumbling to find a relaxing place, both physically and mentally. My mind kept drifting off on random tangents. Songs I should put in my iPod, funny stories I should tell my friends during General's Period, posts I should reblog on Tumblr, homework due over a week ago that I should really start (this post included!). I was maybe able to find 3-5 minutes of peace, when my mind became littered with trivialities again.

After awhile, it got worse. It wasn't just that I couldn't focus, but that I was frustrated, bored, and impatient. I didn't know how long we'd all been sitting here, and how much longer was left. What's the point of this anyways? Humans weren't meant to sit around in silence, isolated from the world around them. We're meant to act!

Honestly, I had a hard time coming to terms with the purpose of sitting in silence in a dark room, not thinking of anything. I guess it's okay that I couldn't attain a silent mind. But it's the things I was thinking about that disappointed me. There's nothing wrong with the thought that I should finish my homework and stop procrastinating, or that I should talk to my friends when I see them and be more social. But in that 18 minutes of freedom, I didn't come to any great understandings. I was just stuck in my day-to-day routine, the one I complain about all the time.

I wonder if I would've achieved a silent mind, or at least thought about something more interesting and important to me, had this gone on longer. Or would I have just become more impatient?