When COVID took the world by surprise and literally stopped us from living the life we took for granted, and where everything seems wonderful, I turned to meditation to provide emotional and mental balance in my new life of isolation and razer focus on creating ByronDarden.com.

Having lost my entire income stream in the matter of a weekend in early March 2020, I needed to pivot professionally in a new direction that could lead me out of the dark valley of unemployment, disease, death, and fear that permeated every corner of my life and move into the possibility of a new and bright future. As of the writing of this article, I’ve survived the tension of the civil rights movement, the AIDS epidemic, the catastrophic impact of cancers in our society, and the ravages of the Coronavirus and its increasing number of variants.

For sixteen years, I’d been an occasional meditator. That all changed in the last sixteen months, and meditation is now a daily practice I’ve come to rely on. It’s as though I found the holy grail of hope blossoming from my developed focus on the present moment. It never occurred to me that I would become so enamored, dependent, and grateful for each breath I take in each passing moment of each passing hour. Now something that seemed as insignificant as a single breath is so richly significant in and of itself to such a degree that I am humbled by simply waking each morning and thankful to experience sunset each evening.