(THIS ARTICLE IS MACHINE TRANSLATED by Google from Norwegian)
I've always been restless. I love being where things are happening, being busy, almost chaotically busy, with lots of things going on and lots of things to do, so that when the day is over I can say, "Today I did something."
For me, days that aren't busy, days where I don't get much done, and where I have to go to bed feeling like I haven't done anything, are pure misery. Slow days also don't give me a breather and a chance to gather my strength. Because I get so frustrated by the things I don't have to do or don't get done, I can't relax, and the day feels like a waste.
Forced calm is, for me, more a cause of frustration than a source of potential well-being.
I like to relax, but it's just so incredibly difficult to achieve. Forced calm is more of a source of frustration for me than a source of potential well-being. I prefer to exercise, hard and long, and feel better that way.
Since I am who I am, there is one question I can't shake off when I read Learning from Silence, the American author Pico Iyer's latest book: Would I survive a stay at Hermitage without going crazy?
Peace of mind for $30
"You have to learn to enjoy your free time. To do nothing and relax. Because that's what Free timeone that things happen to you. But you can't be calm for just half an hour. It's only in the sixth half an hour that things start to develop inside you […]” [quotes Translated by MODERN TIMES's editor].
This is how one of the monks sums up the meaning of life in the Catholic monastery Hermitage on the California coast, in the area called Big SurAt the Hermitage, anyone can find shelter and (try to) find peace of mind in extremely beautiful surroundings, but also under very simple conditions – for around 30 dollars a night.
For many years, Iyer has regularly spent time at the Hermitage, and Learning from Silence is a collection of some of what he has written during the time he has been there. Not that he goes there to write – he goes there, and then he writes as a consequence of being there.
Iyer goes to the monastery, and then he writes as a consequence of being there.
The result is an incredibly beautiful little book. Iyer's words ooze with calm and harmony. They are quiet, but heavy with meaning. It is impossible not to be moved – and not to envy Iyer a little for the calm he obviously feels.
To envy him a little, I do. Iyer is not Catholic and does not believe in God, so “[w]hy do I rejoice in the silence of this Catholic monastery?” he asks, before answering himself:
“Maybe because there is no ‘I’ getting in the way of the jubilation. Just the brightness of the blue above and below. […] It is as if the lens cap has been removed, and when the I is gone, the world can pour in, in all its wild immediacy.”
Not an escape, but a refuge
What makes Iyer's book different from other accounts of spiritual breaks from a hectic life, however, is that his focus is not on what he has left behind, but on what he has sought towards. Since Iyer has been in the small closterso many times, he knows what he is going for, and he seeks it – not because of what he leaves behind in his ordinary life, but because of what is the, at the Hermitage.
The 200 or so pages are like a small gift to us.
"You don't fall in love because of aversion," Iyer writes. You don't love someone because you don't like someone else. You can't feel happiness because you no longer feel sorrow.
There is nothing instructive in this book. The 200 or so pages are like a small gift to us, a small taste and hint of a deep joy. What I think Iyer has understood, and what he is trying to tell us, is not that we need to take breaks from our busy lives, that we need to be disconnected more often, or that we need to learn to shrug our shoulders. But something deeper, an insight into what happens when you really take a step aside – Iyer goes to the Hermitage, not because he wants to escape the world, but because he wants to seek refuge i it.
When we ourselves are no longer at the center, all other things and people get more space.
Getting a little quieter
Whether I would feel the same way if I were there, I don't know. I may not think so. But I still take Iyer's words with me, savor them, feel the weight and love that lies in them, and become a little calmer with each sentence I read. Maybe I have also learned a little from the silence?
“But there are so many ways to find our way out of the prison of the self,” Iyer points out. It’s up to each of us to find our own.
