Living Happiness

Yesterday morning dawned a bright warm day here in Crete, and I set off on my own little mini-adventure. I was ready. I was set. All I needed was to go.

For weeks I’d been eyeing a well-worn path that runs up a hillside and out of sight. G and I pass by it every time we drive down into town. It winds up the side of the hill and (surely, in my mind) winds back down again the other side. Which is exactly what I wanted to confirm when I set off yesterday morning. I was excited and armed with water, my towel, my journal and a pen. Woohoo! Here we go.

I had worked out in my mind that after following the path up and round this hill, I would find myself in this gloriously peaceful clearing with sheep and goats grazing, olive trees olive-ing, and mountains gleaming off in the distance. It would be my own personal Sound of Music gone Cretan! I might even sing!

Instead, I found myself at the top of the hill, sallying forth into a glade of beehives with not a sheep or goat in sight. Thankfully, I had the wherewithal to recognize all the gazillion humming boxes for what they were a good few yards before I actually walked right smack into them. But this definitely meant that my primo, number one choice of seating location was out of the question … unless I wanted to suddenly go native and try to discover any natural abilities I may have as a beekeeper. There were no olive trees either, by the way. The only part of this fantasy that came true was the mountains really, and they weren’t exactly gleaming, as a big cloud bank had swarmed up from the south and west and covered most of the tops of them … and the bottoms were disguised in a filmy haze. The most assurance I had that they were actually there was the fact that I’d seen them there the day before … and every other day since I’ve moved to Crete.

Not to be deterred, however, I simply trailed down one of the little side paths that others had obviously worn before me, hoping perhaps that one of these led to a little spot of Zen. The first trail, though, led to a steep drop that forced me to turn back around and walk back UPHILL the way I had come. The next little trail, likewise, led into a full on army of ants who had commandeered the path and were busy hiking themselves up and down it in full vigor. Can I also just mention that these ants were HUGE?! So again, back up the path I went and found a little rock stool that apparently someone had created there for just such an occasion as this. “Finally!” I thought and got ready to get down to the business of being still.

I had been at this stillness for about ten seconds, though, when I heard it: the unmistakeable sounds of a jackhammer … or many … emanating from somewhere below. Then it stopped. “Ah,” I thought, “peace and quiet, at last.” And then jumped when the jackhammer started jackhammering again. Which it did. In approximately seven-second intervals for the next fifteen minutes that I sat there.

“I can’t believe this,” I inwardly grumbled. “I come all the way up here for peace and quiet and this is what I get.” And I spent another five minutes trying to figure out where that jackhammering sound had been in the thirty-five other minutes it had taken for me to walk from my house to here because, I swear it’s true, I hadn’t heard it!

Finally, with curiosity disappointingly sated and with nerves undeniably jangled, I took back up my water, towel, journal, and pen and made my way back home … where it was blissfully quiet.

So why do I tell all this to you today? Because I learned a couple of lessons along the way that I thought you might like to hear.

1. It is in the silence that we can most hear the noise. The paradox of yesterday’s hillside experience for me is that I went seeking solitude and instead found more noise. And while on a physical and literal level there was nothing I could do to quiet the noise down, this is not the case when the silence we are seeking is of a more spiritual sort. Many of us in some way or another try to meditate or to have a few moments of quiet each day, but as anyone who has meditated for years will tell you, it’s precisely when you hunker down and get still that all the craziness in your mind and soul just erupts: a veritable cacophony of sound bursts forth in your head. And it’s up to you to tame those beasts. This phenomenon isn’t a bad thing. It alerts us to the noise we’ve surrounded ourselves with every day but been deaf to because of all of the other sounds around us. So the next time this happens to you. Don’t panic. Know that it’s normal. It’s one of the reasons why we meditate. And take heart that, at least in your case, you can get the jackhammering to stop.
2. The silence we seek is often found where we started. I left home yesterday looking for an illusory spot of Zen … and did not find it until I came back home. After setting my water, towel, journal, and pen down, I walked out onto the back patio and heard nothing but the sound of birds twittering and wind in the grass. It was peaceful and still. The same is true for us spiritually: the silence that we seek outside of ourselves must inevitably come from within.

Namaste and peace be with you,

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Photo Credit: Photo61Guy