Finding serenity in the everyday

Last week, Gail Vaz-Oxlade wrote a blog post on serenity.  I love that Gail reflects on what’s important in life, and what brings us joy, in addition to financial matters.  I particularly valued this paragraph:

Serenity requires that you learn to be by yourself, quiet, alone. So many people fear the loneliness they may feel that they pack every minute of every day full of action. We often teach our children to fill every minute with movement. Getting stuff done has gained prominence over Just Being. And it’s too bad because in filling up our lives we are leaving no room for serenity.

I posted a comment, that I’ve decided to re-post here:

I love seeking out quiet moments whenever I can, and since I now live in a quiet town and live alone, I have an abundance of solitude. Serenity is very important to me, and I get to create an environment that promotes that.

Serenity can come in many forms, though. Usually we think we have to race through the days, weeks and months until we can finally go away on vacation, and we’ll enjoy rest and serenity then. But it doesn’t haven’t to be so.

Sometimes I find moments of bliss just standing in an elevator. Or walking in the door to my apartment. Or in any number of mundane activities where I wake up and realize that I am Alive, and I am Free, and that those are two very good reasons to rejoice.

Readers, have you found a way of discovering serenity, even within the context a busy life?  How do you seek it out?  Where do you find it?

Speaking of emergence…

And just to follow up with the previous post, I thought I’d share a Pema Chodron quote, which seems to speak to this idea:

At the beginning joy is just a feeling that our own situation is workable. We stop looking for a more suitable place to be. We’ve discovered that the continual search for something better does not work out.  This doesn’t mean that there are suddenly flowers growing where before there were only rocks. It means we have confidence that something will grow here.

I love this. Not only does it imply that there is beautiful potential waiting to reveal itself amidst difficult times, it also affirms that we don’t always need more, we don’t always need different, we don’t always need change, in order to find  exactly what we’re looking for, exactly what we need.  Sometimes we just have to live more deeply, right where we are in this exact moment, in this exact life.  Always so eager to change, looking outward, we seek to solve problems, find solutions, and soothe our discomforts.  What if we just simply payed more attention to exactly what we have, right here, right now?  Each breath, each touch, each smell and each sound? What if we focused on the people we already have in our life and found ways of listening more carefully, of loving more compassionately, of spending more time together, instead of looking for new relationships? What if we tended to our existing possessions instead of buying more, spent more time in our own communities instead of traveling?  There is so much potential in truly experiencing what life we have. How much do we notice, and how much do we forget?

Emergence

On the weekend I took a hike through the wooded area behind my parents’ home.  I took a few pictures, intending to write a post about how little we all need in order to feel really relaxed and happy.  But that’s not what this post is about.  Because when I looked at my photographs, although they weren’t particularly beautiful, they seemed to very clearly reveal a theme: emergence.  The tiny buds in these pictures are pushing up from underneath the piles of dead, grey leaves, and here they are; following a cold and inhospitable winter, they emerge with new life and potential.

It made me think of my own emergence.  It’s been about 9 months now since a big change in my life occurred, and although I’ve decided not to document the more personal aspects of this journey on the blog, suffice it to say that the change has indeed been challenging in many ways.  But I’ve been blessed with so much goodness, so many discoveries.  I’ve met so many fascinating people, who have deeply inspired me with their intelligence, curiosity, compassion, and zeal for life.  I’ve had the opportunity to explore and observe fascinating new sub-cultures, perpetually opening me up to explore new ways of thinking, of living.  I’ve found a new job that is really more than a job, I’ve found an opportunity to devote my life’s energy to a goal that I can finally say is consistent with and supportive of my values.  What’s more, the past 9 months have given me the opportunity to explore my freedom and independence, to re-acquaint myself with my forgotten strengths, to watch some of my old handicaps melt away.

My main life’s goal has always been to lead a compassionate life, and  I’ve always known that I have wanted to devote my life to helping others. Beyond that though, I think that my biggest goal is simply to live an interesting life.  To live with curiosity, with fascination, and with enough neutrality to observe the curious human position without too much judgement – to observe and engage, to experience, to live with awareness and to experience a range of human emotion and possibility.  And so, without having everything in my life “figured out,” without having everything settled, I can still be incredibly grateful for this fantastically interesting life.

I think my pictures posted here speak for themselves; where the ground is hard and grey, lies the potential for new transitions, new awakenings, new growth. And such is the cycle of this fascinating life.

Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving to all of my readers who happen to celebrate this holiday.  I was inspired to read the post, Thank You on Gail Vaz-Oxlade’s blog today. I’ve always believed that being grateful for what you have and being cognizant of all the little ways in which we are blessed, are important steps to having a happy life.  And while I’ve often mentioned that being mindful and grateful is important for those living on a budget (because it’s too easy to feel deprived by focusing on what you don’t have,) it’s just as important for those who have everything.  After all, it’s easy for all of us to forget about how lucky we are, go on auto-pilot, and focus on everything that seems to be going wrong in our lives.

Making time to take pleasure in simple moments and focus on the abundance around us is a wonderful practice, one that has been my main focus since my break-up with my partner.  But it’s easy to diverge from this plan, the more busy we get. It’s obvious to me now that there are triggers that cause me to fall off track from being grateful and mindful.  Comparing myself to others, focusing on what other people have, and thinking about where I thought I would be (as opposed to where I am) can quickly divert my focus and change my mood.  Conversely, practicing mindfulness and gratitude make me feel present, empowered and fulfilled.  The key, I think, is not to wait until we feel that life has given us exactly what we want.  The key is to seek out beauty, kindness and moments of peace even amidst chaos, and practice gratitude for tiny instances which ordinarily go unnoticed, like our breath, the air, the fact that the sun rose and the sky didn’t fall.  A cup of coffee, a green traffic light, the sound of a friend’s voice: big or small, these little moments make up our lives.  In fact, when you start paying attention, it seems that there hundreds or even thousands of little miracles that happen every day, which may be worth some quiet celebration.

What are you grateful for today?