Contemplation: On Keeping the Peace

I live near a green common. Last Tuesday I was walking my usual route around it, after a heavy work weekend where a few things hadn’t gone to plan. As I walked, I noticed my thoughts were arriving fast and in absolutes. My body felt stiff and tense. I was arguing with myself: “why was none of this arranged differently,” “why is it always like this.”

I was tired, and I know what tiredness does to me. But tiredness doesn’t invent things. The thoughts were arriving from somewhere. Does tiredness distort what I think, or does it just stop me keeping quiet about what I already think?

Knowing myself, my tired mind will present the worst possible version of an event. My Virgo stellium operating from its darkest shadows. The distortion is real and I know its shape. But something is living underneath it. Being tired gives me a convenient excuse not to look, and I use it. What’s underneath is that there are things I don’t say, to keep the peace. They don’t disappear. They go somewhere, and where they go is a walk on a Tuesday, arguing with someone who isn’t there. That is not peace. It is resentment building, and distance growing where I wanted closeness.

So: next time you catch your mind arriving fast and unfairly, don’t dismiss the thought because of how it arrived. Ask what it’s pointing at, and whether being tired is giving you permission to ignore it.

The thing I keep having to learn: what I don’t say to keep the peace, I say to myself instead.

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I curate spaces and experiences, through sound, breath and intuition.

This is the work I do with people, one to one: sitting with what lives beneath the story. If that speaks to you, sessions are open here.