Meditation is training / exercise for the mind. Meditation's ultimate goal is to help you retrain how your mind thinks so that you can become free from suffering. To train yourself to change the type of thoughts you have, and be able to reduce and eventually stop having thoughts that cause you to suffer. As you become increasingly free of the suffering, caused by your mind, you will find yourself becoming more happy, joyful, peaceful, kind, and generous... both to those around you, and to yourself.
You can learn to meditation, with nothing more than the two websites links below:
This online meditation manual will give you basic meditation instruction. Read the introduction chapter, then start listening to dhamma talks & meditating.
Try starting with talks on the "basics" on the collected by theme talks page.
This is how I use the audio dhamma talks by Thanissaro Bhikkhu
The two teachers above teach "Theravada". What is that?