A Meditation for Those Who Matter
- Alex Avanth
- Mar 27
- 3 min read
This meditation invites you to reflect on your relationships. Consider it an investment to live a long, fulfilled life with those who matter in your life.
Metta meditation, also known as loving-kindness meditation, is a practice that aims to cultivate positive emotions such as compassion, love, and goodwill toward oneself and others.
Its effectiveness stems from its ability to transform mental states and foster emotional resilience.
I had difficulty getting started with metta meditation; I saw it as too “fluffy” or vague. However, after some time, you truly feel the impact of the practice:
Psychologically, I felt a substantial reduction in negative emotions and better emotional regulation. The idea of viewing my emotions as me is long gone.
From what I understand neurobiologically, I feel much less stressed regardless of the situation.
My relationship flourished. When we recently married, I also saw the actual value of deep relationships. This is no coincidence but a result of consistent investments over time.
What happens when you practice love and kindness meditation? A story from the last days with my mother.
Life should not be lived alone, although parts of life will inevitably be.
During the final weeks of my mother's life, I witnessed the true art of a well-lived life. She was an artist when it came to relationships.
A nurse pulled me aside the final week of her life and told me that she’d never seen so many people by someone's side in their final moments.
People were sleeping on the floor of her room at the hospice. She was never alone - to her final breath, she was with loved ones.
In contrast, I saw an old man on the other side of the hall who had only had visitors twice. Besides that, he was alone, with himself and his thoughts till the end. This is normal for the vast majority of people.
It made me contemplate the question of living a good life. While she still had words, my mother mentioned to me three things that stay with me:
Don’t work too hard; the money you make you cannot fill your pockets with for the next life,
love yourself, and
be kind to others; you do not know their suffering.
The last mentioned was indeed where her investments paid off. One act of kindness always inspires another, and she was with good karma on her deathbed.
Today, I take that practice seriously. Investing in relationships takes a certain amount of conscious effort, and not all relationships end up mattering.
The meditation I practice for this is metta. However, in more simple terms, I call it being the magic. How can you become magic in someone else's life?
When I say magic, I mean unexpected and surprising such as:
Telling people they matter to you spontaneously
Remembering what someone tells you is important to them
Taking time when you are in their presence,
Be with them in hard times, but perhaps more importantly, celebrate their victories
Sounds simple, right? Unfortunately, it can be hard to practice, especially the last point. Please think of how many people you can call to tell them that something good happened in your life.
I bet you that most of your close relationships are in the hard times, but few are with you in the good ones. It’s one of the unfortunate traits of human behaviour, and we find it difficult to be genuinely happy for each other due to our comparison complex.
I invite you to use this meditation to reflect on how you can deepen your relationships. I can guarantee that the deeper your relationship, the more fulfilled your life will become till its end.
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