The Night I Learned to Meditate Over Paella
The other day, I wrote the following as an intro to an upcoming project.
That project. More details coming soon. Until then...
August 21, 2025.
I sit here in an aluminum tube traveling at 575 mph at 41,003 ft above the Atlantic Ocean from Miami to Lisbon, pontificating about how to start this here book you now hold in your hands.
Let’s start on a fateful night sometime in the summer of 2014, when one of my best friend’s dad was visiting us in Houston from Taiwan. My friend, also named Julian, and I went to college together and on our down time between nights of partying, we would often discuss matters of existence and spirituality… these were all fairly unstudied topics for me, yet somehow I loved discussing and wondering with the other Julian.
He often mentioned things he learned from his dad, Kris, who was a practicing Buddhist and internationally known architect, and the star of this little story.
One night while the other Julian’s dad was visiting Houston, poppa Kris came over and cooked a few of us dinner. After enjoying the delicious paella he made for us, I mustered up the courage in my star-struck state to ask him to teach me how to meditate. He lit up and excitedly agreed to teach the 6 or so of us 22 year old, fresh out of college, knuckle-heads a thing or two about mindfulness, breathing, and meditation.
Now let’s briefly back up to a previous not-so-fateful night in high school, when I looked up on the internet how to meditate. I was pretty sure that meditation would give me the same powers I saw the Jedi had in Star Wars and Goku in Dragonball Z.
Everything I started finding online that night simply said different versions of “sit there and pay attention to your breathing.” This must be the wrong approach, I thought. There’s no way I just had to sit there and could turn into a Jedi. I ignored what I read and went about my life, thinking I’d find a better solution to my wishes some other time.
Back to paella night in Houston, Kris sat us around and began.
I forget the exact words he told us but it was basically, “sit there and pay attention to your breathing.” This time I knew I had to trust the process.
He set a timer for 5 minutes and we sat there… paying attention to our breathing. Afterwards, he recommended that we continue meditating daily for a couple months and by then we would start to see some benefits. What types of benefits? He wouldn’t say for sure, because the benefits of meditation would be different for everyone.
That night was about 11 years ago… and I had no idea that what would unfold for me would be and adventure of self discovery, taking me through a series of twists and turns across the world and into the depths of my soul… all of which I attribute to meditation.
I now realize the above writing reveals "book".
There will also be paintings along with said book.
Stay tuned.
PS: I made a new video - https://youtu.be/51n12uyisll