The Streak

by Joseph Connolly

I had a pretty good streak going. Almost 260 days of meditation without any misses or skips. Enough that I was already looking ahead to hitting 365 and making it a full year. 

I struggled a bit with the notion of a meditation streak. it seemed to me to be yet another version of clinging, of holding on to a concept just a bit too tightly. My spiritual director put it in another light—it is good to celebrate your fidelity, he said. That resonated with me, so I kept counting the days. More accurately, the meditation timer on my phone kept counting the days, but I relished watching the number go up after each session on the mat. I wondered if can you claim a daily practice if you don’t practice every single day? Is meditating most days sufficient? 

In the world of sports streaks are especially valued. I have many athletic friends who have amassed all sorts of streaks. These aren’t typically daily streaks, but events that span years and decades, such as running a particular road race for every year for thirty years. I’ve read about people who have run every day for decades. To maintain their commitment to consistency, their stories contain things like going out at 11:30 pm, in bad weather, just to keep the streak alive, or running on the same day as having a surgical procedure. Something about that strikes me as almost pathological, and I found myself wondering if they owned the streak, or if the streak owned them. 

The day my streak ended was the day after my father died. 

The day before—the day of his death—I managed to get a session in, likely searching for some normalcy and routine in my drastically changed reality. The next day was spent with family, comforting each other, and preparing for the wake and funeral. There were many moments when I could have meditated, but I was focused on being present for my family: my mother, my siblings, my children, myself. 

That evening, I sat down at the kitchen table to write my father’s eulogy. I saw the yellow sticky with the word “meditate” written in black Sharpie I had placed there as a reminder. 

I told myself I would sit just as soon as I finished writing. 

I wrapped up four hours later. As soon as I looked at my watch, I realized the streak was over. It was 2:00 am and I had missed a day. I was both sad and a little relieved. My streak was gone, but then again—so was my father. The juxtaposition seemed frivolous. The streak so meticulously recorded on my phone seemed arbitrary. I took comfort knowing that while I was writing I was truly in the moment, and isn’t that a form of meditation too? 

I took a little break, maybe a day or two, before I got back on the mat. I thought about my former streak and wondered what, if any, relevance it had. I thought about the difference between starting something versus continuing it. I thought about endings, loss, freedom, and growth. I returned to the moment, the breath, and the path became clear: begin again.