Silence ….

peace …..

nothingness …..

the beauty of emptiness ….

how can nothingness be so full?

And noise so empty?

So distracting, annoying, even painful.

Silence allows everything to settle allowing clarity

The sun high in the clear deep blue sky, casts it’s cold wintering glare over the sea, the sea choppy and viscous muddled and confused, tan brown from the storm just passed, the sea bed ripped from it’s place, tossed and tumbled swirled around clouding the sea making it confused, dark, secret, a place where things get lost.

I march along the sea front not seeing, my thought’s tumble through my head, crowding it, which concern should I worry at first? The problems I need to solve at work or the phone call I must make, sorting out my car, have I upset one of my friends? All the things I should dealing with rumble together each competing for my attention, my head buzzes and aches, confusion reigns.

I continue marching across the pebbles, trying to exhaust these thoughts the stresses of work, money, all these things I have, their weight a burden I carry through the day. If one thing gets resolved another takes it’s place. They blend and merge disappearing and then emerging from behind each other, then slipping away into the gloom again.

Tired I sit…..

Once in a while, perhaps once a year the north sea is calm for a period, still and smooth and slowly the sand and mud picked up by this shallow swirling tempestuous sea begins to settle. No wind comes to churn it up, slowly it clears. This brown sea slowly turns to a rich deep blue and below rocks become visible, fish swim in clear water and the sea bed rarely seen stretches out undulating before you. For now it is peaceful calm and clear.

As I sit I open my eyes to the sea, the small choppy waves, aftershocks of the storm. I feel the pebbles shifting under me and the warmth of the sun on my cheek, it’s heat burning into me. I slowly let my thoughts go, allowing my mind to empty, dropping those burdens, putting them down on the beach beside me. The waves crash in front of me rushing up the beach, then retreating, dragging the pebbles back with it only to throw them back on the beach with a crash. I feel silence within me, a peace, an emptiness but not a desolate emptiness but one pregnant with possibility, an emptiness that is open and welcoming, one that allows the sun, the sea and the beach in. An emptiness that allows contentment in. Contentment so misunderstood, seen as settling for less, as second rate to forever striving for happiness, chasing, finding it and losing it. To be truly contented is to find the deepest joy. It holds you and sustains you through the trials of life. It is not what you gain that makes you happy, it’s what you let go. The things you have you can lose. Things you let go no longer trouble you, freeing you of care of worry, freeing you to enjoy just being.