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,

Receive Living Happiness in Your Reader or via Email

or follow Living Happiness on Facebook.

Photo Credit: Photo61Guy

There is something I must tell you, a confession I must make today. It is not something I know how to share. I have tried to go round and round the various ways of breaking it to you gently, but I haven’t found one. And in the end, I must be blunt when I say to you this: I live with a thief.

Despite all of the riches I accrue, despite all of the strides I make in my life towards more wealth and abundance, I run the risk of being robbed continually because I live with a thief. I have for years.

This thief takes advantage of my good graces, sitting low and towing the line until I let him out for good behavior. And then I am duped. Every time. He runs off with my stuff, and I am left holding the bag. It is the most wretched sort of arrangement.

I would love to get rid of this guy. Why do I keep letting him back into my life? Why can’t I just cage him up nice and good, once and for all?

I would dearly love to except for one thing: The thief is me.

My shadow side is wide and long, smaller than it used to be, but still big enough to house a thief. It’s got just enough shade to disguise the thief well, so well in fact that I am conned into believing he isn’t sitting there among the shadows but has disappeared, and good riddance. Only he hasn’t disappeared. He is just biding his time in the dark while I flit about in the land of light, waiting for the moment when the next real cache of good stuff comes rolling in and I’m off my guard and he can make his plunder.

What are the kinds of things he’s interested in? Joy and happiness mostly, but he’ll also take a slice out of contentment, peace, self-worth, confidence, purpose – anything that smacks of love and beauty and leaves me feeling gratified.

He goes by several names, but the most common aliases he’s given me (when he does talk to me) are Fear, Distrust, and Insecurity. When he’s operating under any one of these handles, I can rest assured that the pillaging will be great, and – even worse – I may not be the only one robbed, for an even sadder element to this story is that often when he robs me, he robs those around me, as well.

This is what happened to me this past week as I was lured into a blissful sense of security. My guard was down. I had not looked closely into the shadows for a while. So when the time was ripe, he sprang, blinding me to what he was doing by convincing me that I was not loved and cared for and that I didn’t belong. By the time I came to, the damage had already been done. He’d robbed me of my joy and confidence and left my friends with a knock on their noggins that had them reeling with the suddenness of it all. They hadn’t seen it coming. It threw them for a loop, too.

So this week I am once again left to clean up the mess. My friends will rightly say, “Well, why do you keep this guy around then? Either get rid of him or lock him away!” And they will be right. Something must be done. The current arrangement is not working, not that it ever did.

I’ve come to the conclusion that locking him away is probably not a good idea. Whether I acknowledge him or not, he’ll still be sitting there in the deep, dark depths of my heart plotting his break out. And when that happens, after years of confinement, it will be far worse than anything I’ve seen yet so far.

No, the solution seems to be getting rid of him. But that’s a tricky one. He’s a part of me, after all.

It dawns on me that he thrives on the darkness. The darkness is one of the places from which he draws his strength. So perhaps my tactic should be one of weakening him: perhaps he needs to have a good sit in the sun for a while and come out of the shadows. This would definitely help diminish the chances of another surprise attack. After all, how could he hatch up a nefarious scheme if he’s sitting out in my garden in full view?!

I wonder what he’ll do if he’s not allowed to skulk around in the dark anymore. Will he fade away like some ghost, reduced to nothing by the sun’s powerful rays? Will he get bored with me and simply wander off for better pastures? Or will he change, maybe take up gardening instead of pillaging? And what will my approach to him be?

Maybe I shouldn’t get too far ahead of myself on this one. Baby steps first. The first step? Dragging this guy out into the sunlight.

I look forward to hearing your wisdom.

Receive Living Happiness in Your Reader or via Email

or follow Living Happiness on Facebook.

Photo Credits:
First flickrphoto by David Sandell
Second flickrphoto by decade null