The word of the day is “Serenity”

Some say Serenity is vibration set the extreme which can appear as a constant. It is the concept that the soul when focused finds the eye of a hurricane.  As the Shaolin master speeds through a form that to an outsider appears chaotic but to the monk, is a calculated dance practiced thousands of times in his head and by his body, until it becomes flow.  No need to remember how to do it.  Pure muscle memory executing a single thought with complexity you could never stop to explain or remember without forgetting how to do it.  Playing an instrument is a very similar thing, where you know the song, but not where the fingers go unless you are holding the guitar.  This is where you find it…

Serenity, to many is the calm… The peace… The Zen… The idea of the word serene for most people inspires images of a clear blue crystalline lake with the sun rising over snow capped mountains in the distance, or meditating on the shaded back porch of a log cabin on a hillside, overlooking vast fields of tall seeding grass and an evergreen forest beyond… For me those images are ones of solitude and they caused fear… Fear of where my mind takes me when I feel completely isolated and alone… For me, My Zen… my serenity has always been so much more than scenery.

Serenity is thumping bass as I lose myself in dance. Serenity has been found with 300lbs of torque between my legs stepping on a motorcycle pedal to downshift to 3rd while popping the clutch with my left hand and opening up the throttle all the way with hard turn of the wrist as the world screams into a blurry tunnel of color streaking past at 160 mile per hour, when all you hear is a high pitched scream and you aren’t sure if it’s the engine or your soul making it… Serenity has been catching that 8 foot shelf of a wave and popping up on a surf board, dropping down the face using every ounce of muscle memory to stay upright as your stomach is left behind hovering above you, and as the wave crashes over your head and all sound is stripped from the world, you run a hand along the glass as you tuck and hope you can accelerate fast enough to beat the curl before it collapses over you and crushes you into the depths, knowing there would be a fight for the surface before the air in your blood turns to acid… Serenity has been stepping through the ropes of a boxing ring with a larger, more experienced opponent standing in the other corner pacing back and forth like a hungry wolf with anger in his eyes… You breathe in, attempt to exhale the anxiety from your body before you willfully enter a contest to test your speed, stamina, strategy and willpower against his. Serenity has been swan diving from a cliff, penetrating a narrow space between a rocky wedge to avoid impact with the sharp walls. It has been dropping into a 10 foot concrete half pipe on a plank and four wheels, and soaring up the other side to catch air before returning to the base… Serenity, has never meant “calm”… Zen has never meant peace, it has meant standing on the edge of a blade… becoming the eye of the storm… ecstatic rest.  Serenity has always been moments when adrenaline and noise and the fight instinct has kicked me into the present moment. Where all my focus and all my effort forces the past to run from memory, when fear for imminent death in the future is suddenly needed to be counted in microseconds instead of days or weeks or years, where decisions need to be made by instinct instead of thought… My mind is cleared, focused, tuned, and thoughts turn from static to white… 

Before you… my wife

This morning I woke up in your arms, with all of our worldly possessions washed away in a fire… feeling almost cleansed by it.  With the sun shining through the window, for the first time in months I wasn’t filled with pain, fear, or doubt.  Suddenly serenity had found a definition of calm… I found myself in your fitted embrace, suddenly adrift in blissful happiness, complete Zen, totally centered and at one with the universe, and for the first time I found that moment without risking death… Discovered it without drowning out the screaming of my soul, without forcing my mind to focus on the next millisecond… My fears for the future gone, my regrets from the past set adrift in the ocean of time… My heart became that glassy lake reflecting the heavens of your spirit and the mountains of your love in it… My soul became the evergreen trees gently swaying in the winds of your soul and warmed by your light… In that moment I found true serenity, true rest… The pivot of the universe where all motion stops, all fear subsides and all anxiety vanishes into dust and is washed away by just being next to you.

You are my serenity. My first and only true peace.

“It is only after we have lost everything, that we are free to do anything” – Tyler Durden…  I still have you, and the kids… The only things worth anything in this life, apart from the time we have left.  I have no fight left in me, no desires apart from sharing this world with you, and breathing all of the art, play, laughter, love and awe into your lives.