A recent conversation with a co-worker has got me a bit reflective, a bit melancholic. The topic centered around the news that he and his wife had started couple’s therapy. Don’t worry, I think they’re okay—it’s to strengthen their relationship not (as I might’ve assumed) salvage it—so, fortunate for my cubemate, a troubled marriage is not what’s got me all sad and bothered. Rather, it’s a question he mentioned, one his therapist posed: What is peace to you? and, more than that, it’s the answer he gave: the little moments in my day-to-day.

In the context of casual conversation, his answer had blindsided me—my mind went manic. I was now deeply engaged, finding myself unintentionally playing therapist as I probed away with questions like what do you mean by that and how does that feel. Though, I must admit, as much as I’d like to consider myself a well-intentioned listener, my over-asking was not intended to be therapy—at least not for him; it was an internal inquisition; it was me trying to connect with this feeling I’ve had for a while, a quasi-thought at the tip of my tongue that I kept failing to put to words or, more honestly put, communicate to another person without feeling batshit-insane. 

With a simple question and answer, our casual conversation had turned to self-revelation: as he spoke, his words had helped me in finding my own. What he had summated so simply as peace, I could once only describe verbosely through poem: those little moments when you catch yourself in a daze, staring at a treetop as it sways with the wind; or when you tilt your face towards the sunlight, its warmth like a hearth for the soul. I’ve found these moments, though infinitely varied, are consistently rooted deep to one constant: nature, taking the time to surround yourself in the lives of those who speak only through silence. And what better way to describe this experience than just as he did: as little moments of peace? Because, at the heart of it, that’s exactly what they are. 

So one would think that finally finding the words that had eluded me for so long would, much like what they’re meant to describe, have brought me a little peace. They didn’t. In some dramatically ironic way, by putting peace to word, I was more stressed and more concerned. This new understanding of peace had led to angst-filled reflection. I was now hyper-cognizant of the unfortunate fact that, with each passing year, as I plunge deeper and deeper into the depths of adulthood, these types of moments have appeared less and less frequent and, maybe worse yet, less potent. But why was that? Why had peace distanced and dulled itself from me over time? Was it something I did? The throat-swelling answer is yes; it was something I did and continue to do to myself. The source of my failing serenity had been made clear: my own self-absorption.

* * *

How can I number the worlds to which the eye gives me entry?— the world of light, of colour, of shape, of shadow: of mathematical precision in the snowflake, the ice formation, the quartz crystal, the patterns of stamen and petal: of rhythm in the fluid curve and plunging line of the mountain faces. Why some blocks of stone, hacked into violent and tortured shapes, should so profoundly tranquilise the mind I do not know. Perhaps the eye imposes its own rhythm on what is only a confusion: one has to look creatively to see this mass of rock as more than jag and pinnacle—as beauty. Else why did men for so many centuries think mountains repulsive? A certain kind of consciousness interacts with the mountain-forms to create this sense of beauty. Yet the forms must be there for the eye to see. And forms of a certain distinction: mere dollops won’t do it. It is, as with all creation, matter impregnated with mind: but the resultant issue is a living spirit, a glow in the consciousness, that perishes when the glow is dead. It is something snatched from non-being, that shadow which creeps in on us continuously and can be held off by continuous creative act. So, simply to look on anything, such as a mountain, with the love that penetrates to its essence, is to widen the domain of being in the vastness of non-being. Man has no other reason for his existence.

Nan Shepherd, The Living Mountain

* * *

Stress is insidious. Like an infestation, it multiplies behind the scenes, quiet to the point that you’ll never notice how much damage it’s done until it’s become too big to compartmentalize and, trying to relax after a long day, you happen to catch a pest scurry across your living room. You come to Jesus, fully knowing you can’t keep brushing off the problem; the evidence of something more serious now sits in plain view. By recognizing the growing decline of my little moments of peace, it’s as if I had caught a glimpse of said pest crawling out from below. I could no longer relax. The knowledge of a hidden swarm growing in my crawl space now consumed my headspace.

But how did this stress happen? Where did it start? I’ve come to a thought: what is stress but selfishness? My problems at front and center of my world. I think this mindset has crept up on me with age. The older I get, the more my responsibilities grow, and their stresses follow. I now have a job, car, house, dog, partner, and much more, all things I love dearly, yet I’ve probably spent more time worrying about these things than I’ve derived any joy from them. By allowing the joy and excitement of each new chapter of life, each new responsibility, to be overtaken by the worries they’re akin to—ones who’ve grown each year unacknowledged and thus unresolved—these stressors have amalgamated over time, shaping themselves into a box with me insulated at its center. I’m in it alone, the boxed-in walls blocking me from view of any world outside my own. In self-created solitude, I’m left only to self-absorb.

By boxing us in, the selfishness of stress stunts the essence of what makes us most human: empathy, awareness, wonder. It just so happens that those same essence-defining characteristics are the ones found at play behind the peace I’ve been trying to describe: a wonder-filled awareness of the life around you, a moment of pure empathy for the trees, the flowers, the birds, or any other living thing that may cross your gaze. Though I’ve found, as I break down my walls of stress and self-obsession, that our capacity to empathize-for goes beyond just the living. Selfless peace can bring us towards an empathy for the lives of things not normally thought to have possessed life in the first place; an all-encompassing empathy can bring us to that little moment of peace, that little moment of wonder for the vast life behind something as grandiose as a mountain—or something as minute as a rock. And through that peace, that deep sense of connection, we raise the inanimate to life like, Nan Shepherd had put, matter impregnated with mind. 

So, in the hopes of coaxing my little moments of peace back out, I’ve decided to make a more active effort to notice myself less and the life around me more. As if by making the world that surrounds me a bit more lively, I’ll make my own a bit more peaceful. My first step: a poem in appreciation.

And yes, this little rant was in fact just a plug for a poem I wrote:

A Little Peace

Toward the treetops
I watch the way
a breeze breathes rhythm
like life into the leaves
who dance & sing—
still hung up on their father
for their youth, in early august
autumn seems so far—
& away they sing 
& dance & dream & 
(I) see them show the inner
lives (of all such little things)
too often go unsung—& still

their golden hour waits, bathes
her sun behind the branches
brings light & leaves
a silhouette—
those treetops turned
to shadowed shapes:
gray inkblots traced 
green by the grass—
like nature had come  
to paint the proof:
her consciousness
clear as color, 
her canvas now
carved in memory—

a soft hand
a warm breeze
a hallowed dance
a building beat
a man now—
unabashed— 
sheds light to see
(the lives within)
such little things.