At ease in motion and in stillness; balance is what matters most.
2017.06
For a year now, whether busy or idle, I have always felt that what I lack most is serenity. What is serenity? Different people define it differently. So what colour, what smell, what shape is serenity to me?
I ask myself: does serenity just mean quiet, leisurely time? No. As I said, even when I have nothing to do, I still lack serenity. When I'm alone and everything around is quiet and silent, often there's still no serenity. Reading a book I like on my own, sitting with four senses shut and my hearing handed over to music, a few people walking along empty streets at night, laughing now and then, or sitting across from each other in a café in silence: they bring the same degree of serenity.
Quiet and serenity are like loudness and frequency in acoustics: one decides quantity, the other quality. It's like a stick of incense burning quietly, without a sound, but burning all the same, so we can't tell from the incense itself whether there is serenity or not. The measure of serenity is more like the wisp of smoke curling up from it, or rather the scent in the smoke: formless, but really there.
Disturbed; yes, disturbed. When a wind blows, the smoke's shape and colour are thrown into disarray, and the scent is torn to pieces. The wind is formless too. You can't find its cause: where it formed, what path it blew along, who knows. All you know is that there is wind, and it has unsettled the heart.
That's right: something this insubstantial, and yet it keeps affecting our state of mind, really and truly.
Perhaps quiet is not even a necessary condition for serenity. Often, when things are lively, even noisy, I still feel serene. Sometimes I'm plainly in the middle of the world's sounds and colours, yet I feel I'm outside it, calmly watching all the comings and goings, all the trajectories, including my own among them. I used to think this feeling would split me in two; now I feel it is just how things should be, and there should be no pain in it. The dreams my outer self can't reach, the stories it can't tell, can all be realized by my inner self, because the inner self is a whole world belonging to one person. Being alone doesn't mean being lonely, because I clearly feel that a large part of this world consists of things the outer self has brought in, filtered: clean, and utterly serene.
Perhaps you could say that the lack of serenity comes from the outer me taking up too much of my time and leaving the inner me restless. It shows in losing any sure feeling for whatever I do, being unable to tell right from wrong, losing my own values and beliefs, unconsciously following the majority to reduce friction with the outer world, feeling lonely, feeling I'm no longer myself. That is what the Eagles sing about in "Desperado": a life gone flat, without its peaks and valleys. The inner self is so sensitive, allowing no one to peek in, and yet longing so much for common ground and understanding.
And so I feel I can never reach serenity, because the inner self can never beat the outer self, just as spiritual pursuits can never beat material desires, just as smoke and scent, once they rise, are at once thinned out by the time and space around them; this is decided by the basic material makeup of being human. But the inner self is something that never admits defeat, stubborn and unreasonable, so that now and then it makes an unusual decision about something and gives the people around me a real fright. The "usual" it goes against is in fact the outer world, a world made of material foundations and everyone's outer selves. That is probably also why many schools of thought agree that people are solitary by nature: the inner self is such a tsundere thing. It spins its own cocoon and binds itself in it, and knows no peace. It plainly longs for something, yet is afraid of being hurt.
And all we can do is leave ourselves some room as far as we can: to read a book we like on our own, to sit with four senses shut and our hearing handed over to music, or to walk with a few others along empty streets at night, laughing now and then, or to sit across from each other in a café in silence, hoping to come just a little closer to serenity.
I don't really know what I'm writing, or why. Call it a daydream to fight the life I'm living now.
2011.09