Indeed. Meditation is kind of funny because it's dead simple - opportunities to practice it are plentiful - yet people have an incredibly hard time with it. They're going 90 miles an hour and it's like slamming on the brakes for them.

For my part, I've decided there's nothing else I'd _rather_ be doing. It's the only thing in life I can reliably count on to provide a satisfying, enriching experience. The material/hedonistic experiences are still important to me, and most of my time is still spent on them, but they're all pretty transient in comparison.

Maybe it's because I went through a similar experience with meditation, or maybe the author used some clever foreshadowing that I can't consciously pick up on, but for some reason... I knew, as I read his recounting of the misery, that he would come around on page two. The description of pain in the neck and shoulders felt right, in that sense that the author seemed to be saying, "This is when I began to feel the stress I have carried with me for so many years."