Healing Trauma: Perspectives And Attitudes, 28

Anyone who wants to try to live in a way that is good, generous, contemplative and compassionate towards others is also going to have to reckon with spending their lives living as a stranger in a strange land. There is almost nothing in our contemporary, extroverted and selfish ethos that can facilitate inner peace, calmness, self-knowledge and the entire art of caring for others, the earth and the universe. They are absolute incompatibles. Even our braindead Mayor Moonbeam, whenever he and his selected dorks on City Council try to create public or enhance natural space, it is always with the idea of making it attractive to bikes, sports activities, bikes, children's playgrounds, bikes, public gatherings and grey market activities, bikes, places for dogs to play and roam off leash, bikes, places for joggers to run and be a nuisance to pedestrians, and bikes. I have watched with sadness as the quiet spaces in our city shrink and disappear, making quiet solitary walking and contemplation outdoors very difficult to access. You have to either be prepared to join a yoga studio or Buddhist meditation circle, or smoke your brains out on soon to be legalized pot. Even the Arbutus Greenway, which used to be a train track part of the Interurban rail line, has been uglified into a never-ending landing strip, suitable mostly for...bikes. But they generously share the space with people who walk. But to actually get away from other people and their noise and distraction, to not need to rely on iPods or other personal listening devices, to have quiet time unimpeded by narcissistic joggers who do not know how to share sidewalk space, ditto for dog owners and cyclists, to have uninterrupted quiet time, alone, outdoors to give your inner self time to really settle, unwind and listen for the voice of God's silence through the wind in the trees and the songs of birds? Believe it or not, this used to be much easier. I can still get some of this in our local forests, and in the quiet posh neighbourhoods of my city, though a lot of the above-mentioned idiots whose lives appear to be all noise and useless vanity, are even in the trails at times vying for space, totally oblivious to the quiet walkers and watchers around them, who only see and hear those idiots just a little bit too well. But these places still work, I am obligated to make room and space for those who don't, cannot, and seem too threatened by it in order to share my silence, and in some ways this also teaches me to be kinder, more considerate and more compassionate, except for the occasions when I really have to let them know that there is something good about sharing a sidewalk or pathway, and maybe they could relearn the words, "Excuse me" when they seem nearly poised to trample me from behind. This business of making myself vulnerable in silence to God in quiet solitude, also by extension makes me vulnerable to the strident noise and racket around me of the noisy majority who are too preoccupied with themselves and their immediate needs and wants to have time, or even dare to, enter into the silence. But in order to cope, I have taken on these human nuisances and distractions as a challenge to care and to love more, unconditionally, and with compassion. To greet warmly some of the strangers in passing, as though they are every bit the lost friends that they really might be. As long as I can get back into the silence again, to prepare me, to strengthen and rest me, and make me ready for the next distraction.