Not all meditation is created equal.

I gathered all my shoes and lined them up in a row.

The sun was streaming into the lounge, flooding warm light over the wooden floors. It dawns on me – my shoes are all leather. My favourite suede boots belonged to my mother as a teenager and have been patched and resoled more times than I care to count.

I retrieve a pair of sharp nail cutters, beeswax polish, and super glue and set about mending. 

Those threads along the sole stitching poke out like stray hairs – these I trim away. The scuffed toe tip and heel bloom under a good rub with polish. Where the suede leather inlay curls up from the edge of the sandal, a dot of super glue restores its clean line.

It’s true – leather in fast fashion serves only to incentivise the beef industry. But there is a way to care for natural materials that stands apart from consumerism.

As I work, I find myself settling into the quiet rhythm of mending and tending. 

The discipline in this practice is different from what we usually imagine.

It exists in a life that calls out to you. One that asks you repeatedly to tend to it, to give it your time and care. Responding to this call, rather than rushing out to buy new whenever things look worn, becomes its own form of meditation.

The needle meets resistance in the leather. A thought surfaces – “I wonder why she said that?” I reach for the pliers and pull the needle through. The thought dissolves with the motion. In time, my mind finds rest in this repetition of mending – like breath in meditation, but exhaled in stitches.

This careful attention outlasts the rush of shiny new things. It frees us from chasing bigger incomes to replace what was never really broken – just well-worn and full of memories.

With my shuffle of shoes sufficiently restored, I put the kettle on for another pot of tea. I find a spot in the sun, looking on as the cat sits in her own pocket of sunlight, gazing at the bird on a sunny branch, eyeing a worm.

Bird mends nest. Cat tends to her tail. Woman rests.