“If you wish to experience peace, provide peace for another.” -Dalai Lama
It’s Friday and a hectic week is drawing to a close. Not that the weekend, or next week, or the week after is going to be any less hectic, but there is a sense of finality as we pass from one to another.
Someone asked me what “peace” meant to me, and I tend to group it along the lines of contentment, serenity and absence of any serious amount of conscious resistance to whatever the flow is around me at any given moment. Peaceful. going with The River. Floating along…
There once was a king who offered a prize to the artist who would paint the best picture of peace. Many artists tried. The king looked at all the pictures.
But there were only two he really liked, and he had to choose between them. One picture was of a calm lake. The lake was a perfect mirror for peaceful towering mountains all around it. Overhead was a blue sky with fluffy white clouds. All who saw this picture thought that it was a perfect picture of peace.
The other picture had mountains, too. But these were rugged and bare. Above was an angry sky, from which rain fell and in which lightning played. Down the side of the mountain tumbled a foaming waterfall. This did not look peaceful at all.
But when the king looked closely, he saw behind the waterfall a tiny bush growing in a crack in the rock. In the bush a mother bird had built her nest. There, in the midst of the rush of angry water, sat the mother bird on her nest - in perfect peace. The artist who painted that painting won the prize by Royal Decree.
Most of the time when I feel overwhelmed, stressed, frustrated, or angry, it’s because I’m obsessing about my circumstances –everything that feels unfair or insurmountable and all the ways I feel powerless to change them. Or, I’m projecting or dramatizing what might or may happen down the road.
In this state of mind, I inevitably stress other people out, whether I talk about my challenges or not.
It’s there, spoken or unsaid. It gets in the way of my ability to really be present with the people I love, and it affects their state of mind. There is a recent movie called I AM: The Shift is About to Hit The Fan (I recommend it highly) which details some of the metaphysical reasons that this is a common experience. We are so deeply connected to other people, that especially with our closest circle of influence our pains become their pains and our joys become their joys – and, our peace can be shared too.
A kind word, a thoughtful gesture, a random act of kindness or generosity – these are all powerful ways to share our peace. It can easily transform someone’s day, and perhaps – if the stars line up just right – their lives. It’s happened to me.
After years of being a bit of a dolt, I’ve realized that the surest path to feeling more peace for myself is recognizing when I’m challenging other people’s – when I’m drowning my interactions with my personal anxiety instead of creating a positive space for myself and the people I encounter. In other words, when I’m short, abrupt or just plain unkind to people.
For those who know me, it’s no stretch to recognize that I am a person of strong opinions who is quick to share them, invited, requested, solicited or not. It’s just who I am and I rather like being that way. Facebook is a great example of a place where I regularly run into material that really riles me up – sometimes to the point of a perceptual increase in blood pressure. It’s a great learning (not to mention spiritual) experience to let it go. Opinions are just that – and I don’t have to be so heavily invested in mine that I can’t see the perspective of others.
Everything as some truth to it – even if that truth is quite a distance from the perception I have…not everyone is me. Thankfully.
Today if you feel burdened by your struggles, realize that stressing won’t create solutions–it will just create more problems, for you and others. Try doing something really nice for someone - take yourself out to lunch and pick up the tab for another table. Give your gas station person a tip. Just do something simple, but nice. Then enjoy the feeling of peace it brings you...amazing.
An alternative is to just breathe – to value collective peace in the present more than individual control over the future. Ironically, this often makes it a lot easier to identify solutions – and, like the birds in the painting, it conveys the ability to be at peace in the midst of all life’s chaos. What a wonderful gift.
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