Meditation of the Week: Jaansi Patel
By ALEX LIM and ADELLE PITTS
On Wednesday, Feb. 19, students and faculty alike crowded the wooden pews of the Phillips Church for senior Jaansi Patel’s meditation. While the audience, blooming with friends, faculty, and McConnellites, bopped their heads to the beat of Bon Jovi’s “Runaway,” Patel took a deep breath and stepped up to the wooden podium, ready to reveal her story.
Throughout the meditation, Patel used embroidery as an analogy for her experience living with glaucoma, a chronic illness affecting the eyes. She described how she had kept this part of her identity hidden most of her life, and she used her story as a way to encourage us to be cognizant of the things that go unsaid.
Lower Victor Angeline reflected on the use of embroidery as a motif throughout the story. “The backdrop to the entire meditation was her teaching us how to stitch jeans. It was cool how it was able to capture and represent her entire journey,” he said.
Patel’s meditation was an impactful story full of challenge and resilience, but also empathy and acceptance. Her themes of identity and unspoken struggles strongly resonated with the audience and left many with a kinder outlook on life.
“Jaansi’s meditation showed me that no matter how smart someone is, how accomplished they are, or how respected they are, everyone has something they’re going through,” explained prep Aaliyah Salva, Jaansi’s dormmate. “She talked about her experience with glaucoma, and it was impressive to see how she could take the illness’ effects and use them to create a more positive outlook on life.”
“People can have disabilities that you don’t really see,” added senior Sofia Wang. “Listening to her meditation made me more aware and conscious of how you should always approach everyone with kindness, even if they seem fine on the surface.”
Senior Ben Soriano, a close friend of Patel’s, said, “What impacted me was how she was able to talk about a part of her identity that she seemed to have hidden from the world for a long time and discuss it and weave in personal details and anecdotes and stories into this one narrative that did an amazing job of doing what she wanted to do.”
Wang commented on Patel’s use of vocabulary and imagery throughout the meditation. “She was very eloquent with her vocabulary, and her presentation and imagery provoked the listener’s mind. It was the perfect meditation in the way that it had the perfect balance between being an anecdote and those deeper universal reflections.”
Soriano continued, “Not to be cliché, but I learned that there’s always more than what meets the eye. We have to be cognizant of these loads that people may carry with them, even if they don’t show them externally.”
Angeline said, “Jaansi’s meditation gave me a kind of hope for the future. Her ending was bittersweet, and it showed that in the end, we’ll all be okay. I thought it was a really nice note to end on.”
Patel left the room with a lingering note of positivity in the air: “Although living with glaucoma can be challenging, I’ve come to realize that it’s an all-encompassing part of who I am, and I now try to embrace it with positivity instead.”
