Behind the Puddle

I don’t think peace waits until everything is okay.

If it did, I’m not sure many of us would experience very much of it.

There is almost always something.

Something unfinished.

Something uncertain.

Someone we are worried about.

A decision we haven’t made.

A conversation we need to have.

A bill that needs paying.

A body that isn’t cooperating.

A relationship that feels complicated.

A future we can’t quite see yet.

I used to think peace came after those things were settled.

When the problem was solved.

When the answer came.

When the hard part was over.

Then, presumably, we could finally relax.

The trouble is, life has a rather irritating habit of replacing one uncertainty with another.

Behind the puddle, I have started noticing something different.

Peace doesn’t seem particularly interested in waiting for my life to become uncomplicated.

Sometimes it arrives right in the middle of it.

I can sit in my chair with something weighing heavily on my mind and still notice the breeze moving through the trees.

I can be worried about tomorrow and hear the fountain running beside me.

I can have absolutely no idea how something is going to work out and watch a bird land at the feeder.

Nothing has been solved.

The problem didn’t disappear because a cardinal showed up.

The puddle certainly hasn’t offered any useful advice.

And yet, for a few minutes, something inside me becomes quieter.

Maybe that is peace.

Not the absence of everything difficult.

Just the presence of something gentle alongside it.

I think we sometimes make peace another thing we have to achieve.

We tell ourselves we should meditate more.

Worry less.

Let things go.

Be grateful.

Think positively.

As though peaceful people have somehow mastered the art of not being bothered by life.

I’m not sure I believe that anymore.

Maybe peaceful people still worry.

Maybe they still get frustrated.

Maybe they still have days when everything feels like too much.

Maybe peace isn’t something they have figured out.

Maybe they have simply learned to recognize it when it visits.

Because peace rarely makes a grand entrance.

It doesn’t announce,

“Everything is going to be okay now.”

Sometimes it is just five quiet minutes in a chair.

A dog asleep nearby.

Someone you love sitting beside you.

A familiar bird at the feeder.

The sound of water.

A breeze that feels especially good after a hot day.

Nothing extraordinary.

Nothing fixed.

Just a moment when life loosens its grip a little.

I’ve spent a lot of time thinking I would feel peaceful when certain things changed.

Behind the puddle, I am learning not to make peace wait that long.

There may always be something unresolved.

There may always be another question.

There may always be something I wish were different.

But every now and then, peace comes anyway.

And when it does, perhaps I don’t need to ask it to stay forever.

I can simply notice that it is here.

And sit beside it for a while.