"Tranquility Lost"

“I believe that the very purpose of our life is to seek happiness. That is clear. Whether one believes in religion or not, whether one believes in this religion or that religion, we all are seeking something better in life. So, I think, the very motion of our life is towards happiness…” – Dalai Lama

Sometimes you go out seeking the right thing but end up looking in the wrong place. That happened to me this past Saturday when I went for a kayak trip down the Looking Glass River with a group of mostly strangers.

The last 4 months have been a grueling schedule of meetings around Michigan, talking with groups and meeting with our membership. I had just spent the last 2 days with a statewide collection of a group of great people, Michigan dairy farmers and others that are connected to the industry. Our Annual Meeting is the opportunity to personally meet and talk about the many innovative programs that we had undertaken for them over the past year. And if you are not at all familiar with what our dairy farmers—especially in the dairy sector—and what they have gone through in 2009, things were pretty damn awful.

I was not four paddle strokes down the river when the guy next to me started to sound-off about a dairy farm that “killed” a river he was going to kayak this summer. He didn’t know me or who I worked for and launched into his, what I like to refer to as, “the Kool-Aid Induced Psycho-Environmentalist Rant.” I could tell right away, even though I knew a hundred times more about what happened on that river, that if I even opened my mouth he wouldn’t hear a word I said. That was even if he would have let me say it. I know it was a teachable moment and I should have jumped at the opportunity, but my state of mind only allowed me to slow my paddling pace and drop back where his voice slowly faded away to where I could know longer hear him. He did not even know I was gone for several minutes.

I could once again hear the birds singing.

But then this lady paddled up to me and asked me what I did. I should have said I was a philosopher and maybe she would have paddled by and away from my kayak. But, I said I worked for Michigan’s dairy farmers and she proceeded to explain how she would only drink “organic milk and how could farmers blah, blah, blah…”

I almost missed seeing a muskrat gliding along the river's shore. What else was I missing as my brain was being assaulted by this person?

This happened three more times before I retreated in the knowledge that today I would not reach what I needed in the department of “Peace of Mind.” I was missing what I came for, that fierce feeling of spirit that I succumb to when I am on the water with nature.

But I finally dropped back to the tail-end of the group and put a substantial distance between the others and caught a glimpse of what I came for before land was forced under my feet once again.

I saw the first bluebirds of the year.

Note about the above photo: You will notice the green "nose" of my kayak in the lower left corner of the picture and that the photo illustrates the distance I put between myself and the others.