Since writing One-Moment Meditation, I have met many people who were, at first, incredulous at my proposition that you can meditate in just a moment.

Many people assume that meditation takes a lot of time. Others think of meditation as an endurance test--the longer you can sit still, at peace, the more spiritual you are. Many people believe that the amount of time you spend in meditation has to "add up" before you "get it."

The unfortunate consequence of all this is that many people try to meditate and give up, or just don't try at all.

But time and time again, in seminars and workshops, I have taught people that it really is possible to make a make a meaningful change in their state of mind quickly--i.e. to meditate in a minute or less. Once they realize this, meditation suddenly becomes accessible. They realize that they can meditate for a moment whenever they need to, whether they are in waiting rooms, in traffic, in board rooms, or in between bites. They stop postponing peacefulness.

For National Stress Awareness Month, I wrote two articles here about how we pick up stress from others and pass it on--what I called "stresscalation." I argued that we have an ethical obligation to stop our own role in this stresscalation.

But could we also play a role in stopping the stresscalation that we find around us?

While pondering this, I remembered a much-loved picture book from my childhood, A Fly Went By, by Mike McClintock. This simple story not only illustrates how stress can be contagious--it also shows us a state of mind that can help us stop the stresscalation.  

A Fly Went By begins on a sunny, summer morning. A young boy relaxes in a rowboat, at the edge of a lake. Without a care in his mind, he remarks:

When we pass stress on to others, we create a more stressful world.

It doesn't matter how we got stressed in the first place, or whose fault it was originally. As soon as we're stressed, it is our responsibility, and what we do with it is up to us.  

When we bring our stress forward, into the next thing we do, it has an effect. We make costly mistakes. We fail to notice novel solutions. We give other people a difficult day. And then they are liable to do the same to others. In other words, we become agents of stresscalation.