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You can't meditate your way to inner peace
The Good Stuff

You can't meditate your way to inner peace

Unless you're a dog

Ryan Barry
Jun 20, 2025
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Ryan's Substack
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You can't meditate your way to inner peace
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Bruh.

There are always a million things to write about. What do I want to write about today?

I could write about anything.

I think what matters most, I’m starting to learn, is not exactly what I write about, but that I’m not in such a rush when I write . . . That I take my time excavating what’s within, making sure not to mistakenly chip into the fossil I’m after.

Because I can’t control what’s below. Only how carefully I uncover it.

Indeed, there are a million things to write about. A million things to uncover. But I’ve just got to write one word at a time—because that’s all I’ve got a hand in—and I’ve got to enjoy each letter as best I can. Because there will come a time in the near future, no more than three or four hours from now, when the caffeine will wear off and my attention will wane and the day’s duties will start calling and I’ll have to pick up and be on my way.


This is all I’ve been wanting to do with my time, really.

My whole life, all I’ve been after is the present. I just want to be with it. To appreciate it.

But it’s hard to be with the present, because the way to it is not always so simple. The way to the present is quite often with the future in mind.

Because shit falls out of order. And if you’re not constantly tending to the weeds and cutting back the branches and clearing away the dust and stopping the goop from piling up, you’ll find yourself further and further and further from what’s before you.

It’s counterintuitive, I know. But it’s how life works.


“The mistake that so many people make is that they do just enough. They don’t go above and beyond. They don’t do 110% for five days in a row. They do just whatever they need to get through the day . . . And so their life becomes just that—whatever they’ve got to do to get through the day.”


There’s always something that’s got to be done, and while I suppose you could, if you liked, forgo your worldly duties and sit under a tree and meditate—or act like these things don’t matter—the fact is that that’ll do you no good. Because these things will come one day and nip you right in the buttcheek.

A lot of us young’uns don’t understand this. For good reason, I suppose.

I didn’t understand it for a while. But I’ve started to understand it a little more recently because, after taking the time and putting in the effort to do all these things I’ve needed to do, I feel a lot better. I feel like I’m able to be with things.

I thought I needed an escape. But I really just needed to commit.


There’s no point in sugar-coating it: you’ve got to get ahead if you want to be here.

It may sound bad, it may sound immoral, it may sound unsound, but it’s a fact. You’ve got to make like Poor Richard if you want to be “happy.”

"It would be thought a hard government that should tax its people one tenth part of their time, to be employed in its service. But idleness taxes many of us much more, if we reckon all that is spent in absolute sloth, or doing of nothing, with that which is spent in idle employments or amusements, that amount to nothing. Sloth, by bringing on diseases, absolutely shortens life. Sloth, like rust, consumes faster than labor wears, while the used key is always bright, as Poor Richard says. But dost thou love life, then do not squander time, for that's the stuff life is made of, as Poor Richard says. How much more than is necessary do we spend in sleep! forgetting that the sleeping fox catches no poultry, and that there will be sleeping enough in the grave, as Poor Richard says. If time be of all things the most precious, wasting time must be, as Poor Richard says, the greatest prodigality, since, as he elsewhere tells us, lost time is never found again, and what we call time-enough, always proves little enough: let us then be up and be doing, and doing to the purpose; so by diligence shall we do more with less perplexity. Sloth makes all things difficult, but industry all easy, as Poor Richard says; and he that riseth late, must trot all day, and shall scarce overtake his business at night. While laziness travels so slowly, that poverty soon overtakes him, as we read in Poor Richard, who adds, drive thy business, let not that drive thee; and early to bed, and early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise.”

And it’s not because you’ve got something to prove—it’s not because you are unwhole and some sort of worldly success and attention will bring you full circle. No.

It’s because life costs money, and the garden and its adversaries are always growing, and waste matter is always accumulating, and your children are always eating . . .

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