Tranquility

The hubbub of daily life includes many things which stimulate the senses, sights, sounds, smells, and the push & pull of crowds. The maelstrom is not just a feature of modern life, as bustling, noisy, crowded cities and towns are ages old.  The intensity of stimulation is however greater with the traffic of various sorts, the screeching of brakes, honking of horns, rumble of trucks and buses, the dingle of bike bells, and the relentless flow of electronic information on phones and other media.

The need for moments of tranquility has perhaps never been greater.  I have previously related the peace one can find in early morning on a golf course yet filled with others. But it is worth a word about the approach of the great Bobby Jones to tournament golf……it brought a crucial form of tranquility to key shots. As beautiful portrayed allegorically in the Legend of Bagger Vance, the ability of a golfer to exclude the crowds from his or her vision as they frame a shot in their mind’s eye brought moments of peace and focus to execute at a high level. Exclusion of distractions is a venerable approach to maelstroms.  It is a little like the art of “Compartmentalization”, exemplified by the parable that “even Einstein, when tying his shoe laces, thought only of the bow”.

As one who grew up in the rural prairies, working hard along side my parents and siblings on a large mixed farm, I had the luxury of certain activities filled to the brim with tranquility.  A couple that stand out include the days we would spend picking rocks off of a particularly rocky half-section of land.  This was usually done on cool days in the fall after the crops were in the bins.  Winds would leave one sort of alone out there with 3 or 4 others, hocking rocks into the back of a wagon or pick-up truck to then dump in stone-piles at particular locations on the acreage. This was peaceful activity that was really good for the muscles of your body.  What’s more, we often had additional help from first nations folks who were much more artistic than our family members. The beauty of the architecture in the stone-piles they built was stunning actually, much more like an elevated courtyard than a pile.

Another activity that stands out for its inherent tranquility on the farm was combining/harvesting at night in the early fall. This was especially so if you were driving the truck into which the combine operator unloaded hoppers of grain “on the fly”.  You would wait at the strategic site when you knew by prior knowledge of the yield of the crop and the capacity of the hoppers at a particular point on the field.  There was deepening darkness as the evening reached into night time, and when you turned off the engine of your truck to wait, you could hear only the low pitch hum of happy combine engines and gears, while in the sky above the aurora borealis played back and forth like a Carnegie Hall performance of the natural world. This was shear exhilaration.  It is among many reasons we didn’t mind in the least working until nearly midnight to gather the grain that kept our lives solvent and sufficient economically.

A couple of other thoughts about tranquility. This may surprise people, but I like to iron clothes.  Now, at the present time, neither my wife or I have positions that require crisp, wrinkle-free clothes.  And, the pieces of clothing that do need such can be taken to professional cleaners. But a couple of decades ago, when I felt compelled to wear suits and ties and “white” shirts, I would iron nearly all of my clothes.  Even clothes that came back from the cleaners didn’t meet the standard of sharpness to be worn without additional ironing touch-up.  So, in one corner of our master bedroom, the ironing board stood (majestically), never taken down, waiting for my regular visits.  I had as much concern about the quality of the board and the iron as I would now devote to a given golf club or ball.  I loved to make the clothes “perfect” and to see how the iron, typically with just the right bursts of steam, could take a good-looking shirt to a great-looking shirt.  I was fully absorbed in the peace and tranquility of those moments….now gone.

Finally, assuring at least some sufficient level of tranquility in one’s life is both an approach and a state of mind.  One simple thing to do…….intentionally, when not on call, leave your cell phone at home when you go to dinner with your spouse.  While it may initially cause anxiety, it will give way to peace and to a much more meaningful evening. Disconnecting from electronic media of all sorts brings us back to nature, the people we are, the centre of quietude.