Finding Inner Peace.

Inner Peace

The movies do a good job of illustrating what it must be like to reach a moment of serendipity.  In “The Bridge at Toko Ri” William Holden braced himself for the upcoming battle by facing the wind and letting the breeze hit him hard while he was standing at the front of an aircraft carrier.  Kevin Costner let go of the reins of his horse and was galloping, with his eyes closed and long hair flying, in front of the enemy lines in “Dances with Wolves.”  In the movie “Deliverance,” and the book that it was based on, a man’s last thoughts as he was shooting the rapids of a backwoods river was, “I am free!”  These are just three examples of men reaching an epiphany, or a moment of peace, right before they thought that they were going to die.  Yet I am alive, and intend to remain so for a few more decades, so I need to find a way to achieve inner peace while I live.

Sometimes I step out of the front door of our school building after a long day spent in a dark and cold classroom; I’ll feel the sun on my face, and the breeze in my hair, and I’ll feel free.  It is a brief sensation, and I have to take a moment to acknowledge it, so that I can appreciate it.  Sometimes peace comes without effort, like when I am coasting down a huge hill on my bike, or running on a track.  At other times, I have to actively search for peace while letting my troubles wash around me. After closing my eyes, I work to block out any negative thoughts and memories, and live in the moment.  This moment has happened on vacation while sitting on top of the double decker bus in Times Square, or crossing the bridge to South Beach, or standing in front of the boat in Biscayne Bay, and by sitting on the bench at Wynnewood while the rest of the family walked around to look at the art.

Jack London once said, “You can’t wait for inspiration to come to you.  You have to hunt it down with a club.”  The same thing can be said for inner peace in that you have to go looking for it.  One of the ways that I force myself to slow down is to drive my car on extended road trips.  While in the car, I know that no matter what I do I won’t be able to get to my destination quickly, so I settle in for a long ride and allow my mind to wander.  The constant drone of the car propelling itself down the road can block out all distractions, and the vibrations that my vehicle emits have a calming effect.  To ensure that I am comfortable on a long ride I sit on a soft pillow, and then stuff a second pillow at the small of my back, next to my lumbar, to avoid back pain.  In effect, I become locked into position into my seat, just like the drivers at the Indianapolis 500.  I like to drive through the night because when it is dark out, and there is little traffic on the road, I can I work myself into a trance.  Before I know it, the hours have flown by and through concentrated thought; I have exhausted myself mentally and physically.  Finally, at the end of a long road trip, I park the car, and unbundle myself from my seat.  My whole body creaks and groans as I stretch while I get used to standing on my legs again.  I feel completely satisfied.

Crossword puzzles are a good way for me to slow myself down.  Everything in today’s society comes so fast and easy but there is no way to work crossword puzzles quickly.  I have to set aside an hour and a half for concentrated thought if I hope to finish one.  Meanwhile, just when I thought that I knew a lot of information on a variety of topics, working a crossword humbles me by reminding me of how much I don’t know.  They are a good tool for learning new things but, if I am to get anything out of it, I have to have the self-discipline to look up the words that I don’t know.  Also, I find it immensely satisfying to fill in all of the blocks of the puzzle.  I always use a red pen as a stark contrast to the black and white newspaper, so by the time that I am done the paper looks as though it has been bloodied from my efforts to finish the puzzle.  The intellectual challenge affords me the luxury of forgetting myself for a while.

  A permanent peace is impossible to maintain so I have to satisfy myself with a brief respite from the thoughts that constantly plague me.  A strenuous work out helps.  Alcohol can provide temporary relief. A long bike with Broadway musicals blaring into my earbuds can take me away.    The movies can distract me as well, but only if it a good one; if it is not then I cannot concentrate on the film and my mind goes back to whatever it was that had been troubling me.  Aside from these ideas, I’ll snatch a few moments of peace from where ever I can find it.  If I can’t find a way to rest my brain then I become impatient and my temper is likely to flare up, just like in the old days, and that wouldn’t be good for any of my relations with anyone.

To give up on inner peace is to give up on happiness.  It is worth the effort so I do things that I never thought that I was capable to calm myself down.  For example, I attend the ballet so that I can concentrate on the beauty of dance.  In the moment, the ballerinas represent the best of humanity and I admire them for the precision of their dance and their athleticism.  The plot or drama is unimportant to me as all I want to see are the dancers in their beautiful white dresses.  The pride in the faces of the individual dancers, and the synchronicity of the company when they dance as a group, can uplift my whole day and gives me something to reflect on for the following weeks.  Life can be bleak, and humanity is sometimes selfish, but to share some time in the same room with the best of us is well worth the effort.  

Inner peace has always been elusive for me; a goal to strive for but to never win permanently.  Yet to give up on inner peace is to give up on hope and happiness; to fall back on the self-destructive behaviors of my youth.  It is tempting to stoke the hot coals of my past, which are now dormant below the ash, and allow my old anxieties and insecurities to flame up.  But I refuse to take that step backwards so I continue to fight against depression and for happiness.  The struggle is worth the effort.  Before I can be a good teacher, a good father, and a good friend, I have to be at peace with myself and that is why inner peace is so important to me.

Book 3 Chapter 5 Section 1: A Boy and his Dog

             Book 3, Chapter 5, Section 1 "Twin Oaks Drive"

            “Stay!”  Jeff yelled at his dog, Sonya.  “We can’t start the game until I get on the other side of this fence.”  As long as Jeff could remember, he had played “Hide and Go Seek” with his dog.  There was an estate behind the row of houses, and across the street, from where the Frazier family lived.  The owners held a huge lot of land and, while Jeff was growing up, he and Sonya would go up the woods to explore the only forested area of their neighborhood.  As he became older, Jeff explored his way to the fence that bordered the acreage that belonged to the Humphreys with the secondary streets in the suburb.  Jeff held onto Sonya’s leash until he was ready and then he yelled, “GO!”  Flinging himself over the fence, so that Sonya could not follow him, Jeff searched for a good hiding spot.  Meanwhile, since the dog couldn’t jump over the five foot fence, she had to go all of the way around the barrier.  That run only took a minute or two but it gave Jeff the lead time needed to find a suitable hiding spot.  There was a church yard across the street and the open space allowed Jeff to run from Sonya and gave him a chance to duck under a picnic table or slide into some bushes.  The best hiding spot was up an old pine tree because the dog didn’t think to look up to find Jeff.  If she didn’t find her quarry within a few minutes then she would give up and start to make her way back home.  Once he saw his dog retreating, Jeff yelled, “SONYA!” and the dog straightened up, picked up her ears, and then resume the search.  Yelling always gave away Jeff’s position so, by that point, the game was up.  If Sonya didn’t find Jeff after the first clue then he would continue to yell at her every few minutes. Finally, after a few rounds, boy and dog tired of playing “Hide and Go Seek” and they retreated into the twenty acre woods for the long walk home.             

            They spent hours alone together in the woods.  It was just a few acres of undeveloped land but they imagined themselves to be in a forest.  Sonya and Jeff roamed the woods together, wasting away the carefree days of his boyhood.  When they became tired of retracing the foot paths of the wood then they explored the creek that the Humphrey’s land bordered on.  A heavily trafficked road stood threatening on the high ridge on the far side of the creek, and beyond it the boy and dog were no longer safe, so they never ventured beyond the creek.  Jeff followed the edge of the water until he reached the viaduct, which marked the furthest point of his travels, and he searched for minnows and turned over rocks to find crawdads along the way.  Only after hours of exploring, when the boy and his best friend became tired, did they make their way back to their house on Trinity Hills Lane.  Sometimes they were both caked with muck after trudging through the knee deep mud on the banks of the creek.  It was a simple job to take the garden hose to Sonya to wash her off, but it was not so quick and easy to get the mud off of Jeff’s shoes and pants.  They were permanently stained but Jeff wore that as a badge of honor, along with the stickers and the tics that attached themselves to him, as a demonstration of his toughness and independence. 

            Over time, Jeff came to memorize all parts of the woods; the best tress to climb, the foot trails, and where to hide in case there were any shadowy figures in the distance.  Wanting to claim a small part of the woods for his very own, he dug a big hole, large enough to lay down in and no one could see him until they were right on top of the hole.  His intention was to dig out enough dirt so that he could sit in the hole without anyone seeing him and then camouflage the whole area so he could completely disappear. In his innocence, Jeff thought that the mere act of digging a hole would give him ownership of a small part of the woods, but he lost interest in the project and, over time, the hole filled in until there was no trace of it any more. 

            Jeff’s best days growing up were the days that he spent away from the house and it wasn’t because of his love of nature.  Mostly, he was doing my best to just stay out of the way.  He didn’t have any close friends even then because he was a loner and an outsider.  Defensive and thin skinned around his peers, the boy could relax and lose himself in the solitary remoteness of the woods.  It was the only place where he could find peace in his pre-adolescence years and he felt free in the midst of overgrowth in the forest.  If anyone else from the neighborhood happened into the woods, Jeff hid behind a tree or some bushes so that he didn’t have to share his space with them.