So its been about a year since I moved to the island. A year of quiet, solitude, observing nature, introspection, and change.
No sirens
No constant drone of the city
No solicitors
Owls
Bats
Birds
The smell of the earth and the forest
I have spent quite sometime looking at the nature of myself, loneliness, and solitude.
It isn’t always easy, in fact its sometimes outright terrifying.
Being alone by choice has been illuminating, it has shown me who I am, my wants and desires, my fears and joys. When there is no one around to converse with, you end up conversing with yourself a lot. When there is no one around to blame you realize that everything is you. Sometimes I try and blame the dog, but then I remember that its just me.
This reminds me of a story
The Empty boat
A monk decides to meditate alone, away from his monastery. He takes his boat out to the middle of the lake, moors it there, closes his eyes and begins his meditation. After a few hours of undisturbed silence, he suddenly feels the bump of another boat colliding with his own. With his eyes still closed, he senses his anger rising, and by the time he opens his eyes, he is ready to scream at the boatman who dared to disturb his meditation. But when he opens his eyes, he sees it’s an empty boat that had probably got untethered and floated to the middle of the lake. At that moment, the monk achieves self-realization, and understands that the anger is within him; it merely needs the bump of an external object to provoke it out of him. From then on, whenever he comes across someone who irritates him or provokes him to anger, he reminds himself, “The other person is merely an empty boat. The anger is within me.”
There are so many empty boats floating about. When out of nowhere, one broadsides me, I laugh because I know its only me.