Solitude

“In solitude, where we are least alone.” -- Lord Byron

Byron gets it. The voices in our heads are the ones that come out and scream at us loudest when we are alone. I get it at night. I hear they are hard to squelch when people are trying to meditate, trying to reach enlightenment. I remember being down on my knees praying in church and they made an awful racket at times. Definitely not the voice of God or the Devil.

The voices were not people but more of a collective orchestra of passionate discord. Drums of memories and horns of worries and string sections of possibilities. I know it wasn't the choir or the organ because I would choose the music-free mass offered on Sunday morning. I really never cared that much for church music despite the fact my own mother played the organ at the church I attended. I was proud that she played so well and the congregation enjoyed her tunes but rare was the hymn that pleased my ears. "Morning Has Broken" was one I did enjoy. Cat Stevens did that old English hymn justice when he sang it on the "Buddha and the Chocolate Box" album. Probably my music likes were corrupted by all that devil rock and roll I listened to. Maybe that was where the noise in my head came from. Perhaps all that resounding guitar and drum and bass line playing. Loud too.

But the solitude that invades my head can take on my forms.

It can be intoxicating. With vigorous ideas and beliefs and dreams that it believes my body can accomplish. A drunkard it is, bragardly and boastful to my inner souls desires.

Other times, though rarely these days, it is a bitter tonic full of anger and frustration. Aimed at people, places, things, responsibilities. I assume that those type of voices mellow as you get older, as you taper down on the emotions that dominate you in your youth. The same stuff that makes you think bungee jumping off a bridge might be a good idea.

But mostly now I hear the whispers of truth that solitude allows me to see clearly. The voices work to quiet and settle my mind so that it can focus and refocus on the important task of happiness. Clarifying the perceptions of the world that I am encountering with my body.

Although my mind tends to be a very noisy place, when I look hard enough and seek out the corners of tranquility that are hidden there, it is those quiet and still places that lead me to truth.

"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.