 Of course, there's a growing literature on the benefits of meditation, but I want to suggest that there's nothing likely to appear in that literature that represents the deepest reason why one should meditate. Well, having a good immune system and reducing stress are good things, but the other way to think about this is that you are always meditating on something. Your attention is always bound up, and mindfulness is just the ability to notice this process with clarity. Let's say you pick up your phone to check your email, and at that moment your five-year-old daughter starts telling you a story. You could be so lost in your thoughts about your email that you don't even notice that your daughter is talking to you, or you could notice it only to rebuff her in a way that makes her feel terrible. That's how most of us live most of our lives, even after we learn to meditate. But the more you train in this practice, the more degrees of freedom you'll find in situations like this. You can feel the urge to check your email in your body, and simply let it go. That is, you can actually break the link between the feeling and the behavioral imperative it seems to communicate. You can become the kind of person who is fully present in moments like that. Not just for yourself, but in this case for your daughter. There are literally hundreds of moments like this throughout the day. These are choice points that wouldn't otherwise exist. And as you grow in mindfulness, you begin to have insights into your true motives in various situations. That is what it is to live an examined life.