Meditation is an overloaded term, and one of the overloads is (IMO) from people who are practicing a symptom of a more aware mind without knowing the goal.
Others above and below have pointed out a few great points about “meditation” that I find relevant:
- It serves to introduce a delay between stimulus and action
- It gives you the time to discover subconscious thoughts that you haven’t noticed prior that may be causing negative emotions like anxiety
I personally meditate by taking the time to think extensively about things people say to me and things I feel when I’m not in some urgent situation. Also, my extremely supportive and mindful wife and therapist are highly involved in this and I’d never have found success without them. I have a history of anger and anxiety issues. The mindfulness I describe has been my ticket out of the personal impulsive hell I built into my early 30s. Others discovered their ticket via meditation of the breathing, etc.
For me, meditation is sitting at my desk, sometimes idly and sometimes not, contemplating everything I feel, why I feel it, if it’s valid, what others feel, what my goals are (most important part), what my next steps toward those goals are (other most important part), etc.
Hope this is insightful. I think meditation is a very weakly defined term in the US.
I had been overly self critical most of my life, and that made me unhappy. Additionally, I had a friend tell me that I had "too much ego". I did some research on "how to reduce your ego", and Buddhism appeared on my radar. I explored deeper, and started practicing. It showed me not to get too attached to a lot of the thoughts that I was very attached to. I was also very attached to a particular kind of self worth. I realised that I did have too much ego, not necessarily like the typical form of narcissism, but I was still too "self-centred", except instead of the "self-loving" narcissism, I was the "self-blaming" kind.
With meditation I learned not to pay too much attention to some of the thoughts, which helped calm me down. My complete solution did involve more than meditation, though, I went to therapy as well. Meditation feels more like a kind of "supplement" rather than a cure-all, tbh.
For me it had two elements, an increasing dissatisfaction as I got older and realized none of the "standard" things that were supposed to make me happy (possessions, status, etc.) were really making me feel good, and pure curiosity.
I’m trying to find those personal specific seeds that drove people to meditation.
Judging by the comments here - there are not that much. Most just repeat common mass media Knowledge about meditation.
Although some comments feel deeply personal, this is why I try to find more evidence, not just put a label on this meditation thing.