Inner Peace

WEDNESDAY. The great twentieth century visionary, John Lennon, once said: "Life is what happens when you're making other plans." In the big scheme, what happens in the world isn't up to us. Self-will is often self-defeating. The key to living happily lies in discovering creative, graceful ways to respond to whatever life dishes up.

It's been four days since Comcast promised to hook us up. In short, they didn't. The feed needs to be dropped down the pole across the street and buried under the road before they can connect us. The tech advised me the next available date for work is September 1. On learning I'd have to wait another two to three weeks before the crew could get out here, get permits, dig up the road, and then have a tech come out to hook us up, I pretty much lost it. My obvious agitation over this alarming news drove the tech away. He left without a word. Thirty minutes later I got off the phone with Comcast, the September 1 date galvanized and apparently unchangeable, despite my pleas. I threatened to call the President of Comcast and demanded the corporate office phone number. I ranted and raved. Nothing helped.

Carrying my frustrations for the next four hours made me feel sick and did me no good. My pulse pounded, my head hurt, my stomach churned. And all over a little bit of coax cable. There is no doubt that using dialup for several more weeks will be inconvenient and difficult for large file transfers and web work. However, life will go on and, in the big picture, this minor blip really won't make a difference. With that realization I made the conscious choice to be grateful for dialup and stop whining about cable. Period. I can live with a little inconvenience for a few more weeks.

Things take longer in New Mexico. The pace is slower, though you'd never know it on the freeways during rush hour. The East Coast sense of instant gratification is absent here in Albuquerque, a city more laid back than any place I've ever lived. I'm discovering that real peace, however, dwells in the heart and mind, not in the external environment. Remembering this is often a challenge for me. I tend to cling to old ways of thinking that linger long after they are proved fruitless and self-sabotaging. Yet, after a little over two weeks in Albuquerque, I feel somewhat closer to genuinely understanding the elusive concept of inner peace. Living simply opens the door to that understanding.

Over the years I've created a complicated, cluttered life for myself. Those of you who've kept up with my blog posts over the past few months have read about my "decluttering" process as I prepared to move. Reducing my possessions by 75% has helped, but I continue to need decluttering. I open boxes and think, "Why in the world would I need this?" I question why I brought this book, or that glass, or this chair to New Mexico. Do I really need these things to be happy? And if things don't provide happiness, what does?

Decluttering isn't limited to "stuff." It applies to thoughts and motives as well. Call it a mid-life crisis, but I think there's something profound happening inside. Within a few hours after the tech drove off, I set aside my anger over the cable debacle and settled into a peaceful evening of appreciating my dialup connection. I welcomed the opportunity to check email less frequently and break the bonds of servitude to the internet. Instead of complaining about not having 500 digital TV channels, I smiled and adjusted the rabbit ears that draw four strong channel signals to my modest 19 inch analog TV. Four channels is one more than the three weak signals I received in New Hampshire for five years, and life was perfectly idyllic in the North Country without cable. It's quite possible that gratitude is the foundation of inner peace.

This house is spacious. It's twice the size of our last home, and given the fact that we left much of our household back in Florida, there's a great deal of empty space. While we still seem to want to fill up that space with "stuff," we're both getting more used to the idea of empty walls and less crowded cupboards. It's very soothing. For years my mantra was, "Where will I put this?" Now, I actually find a sense of fullness in the emptiness.

Inner peace seems to dwell in simplicity. There's nothing complicated about living. It's as easy and natural as breathing. Why do we make it so complicated? In this moment I'm watching an apricot and wedgewood sunrise, as desert dew glistens on the flowers in the garden. It seems impossible to need any more than this.

I wish you all a peaceful day.