"Rivers know this: there is no hurry. We shall get there some day."

Wisdom from Pooh... again: Rains come, naturally, and can make days gloomy. Eeyore—lovable despite his gloom—finds a reason to whine but manages to endure. Owl might find solace by sitting inside with a book and a fire. I like the book and the fire option as it makes the gloomy cold days sorts of wonderful, but still the world outside is raw and can be unpleasant. But there is another side to those rainy days; rains fill rivers, and rivers flow, and "rivers know this; there is no hurry. We shall get there some day." -- A.A. Milne

"Rainy Days and [Tuesdays]"... Last Tuesday I was in a funk. (This story today starts on that day, and it ends nicely despite all this gloomy preface.) So, nonetheless, Tuesday's have been difficult for me lately for a number of known and some unknown reasons... Reasons aside, I was really in a funk... spinning.

There's got to be plenty of nature in the 100 Aker Wood: I get stuck in my head... and I talk a lot. I think the two are linked. But this post isn't about that introvert stuck at performing an extrovert's role in the world—the Pooh caught up in thinking like a Piglet and behaving like a Tigger—this post is about one of those times when we find the things we need most at the times we least expect to find them...

It's hard to find a moment of quiet while doing 60 down the highway: So I was driving away from a difficult day at school; driving toward an appointment I did not want to keep. I was driving away from a day in which I had done real good for a few others, but had done little to remedy my own funk. I found myself abusing a bit of my free time spinning up my brain into a tizzy of ineffective anxiety over things I have no control over, yet have a deep desire to affect nonetheless. Driving seems to afford me the time where I can do that.... And so I turned on the radio to find some peace in music. I found none in the buggle-gum pop of 92.3, the new-metal of 103.5, or the unpredictable progressive of 102.7. Did I dare a mid-day try at 90.3 (NPR) to be assaulted by medical-call in shows, or worse, the seemingly near-constant fund-raising of Alan Chartock? I dared... and pleasantly tuned in to hear a man talking about clouds; how stopping to look at nature was centering and peaceful. He was interesting to listen to. He seemed a quirky kook who might in fact be a sage. He suggested that if we all stopped to look up for a moment and lose ourselves in that moment of nature we might find some peace in our day. There seem to be so many sages who offer similar advice—simplify, observe, breathe—and this one was speaking to me as I drove myself down the road, slowing the spinning, quieting the anxiety, thinking about clouds...

2000 temples and shrines intended for sitting still: And immediately after the cloud-man's story, was the story of a writer/journalist who had found happiness in his busy-ness, as he traveled the world satiating his curiosity... and yet found there was never enough time to do it all. So he gave up much of his life, moved to Kyoto, Japan and began sitting in stillness. He said "it's in stillness that we prepare ourselves for dealing with the realities of life, which are often very difficult ones." I did that once, by accident; went to a spiritual place and sat in stillness when I was 20. I found a peace that allowed me to become a person I liked better than the one who went off on an adventure to see part of the world. My wife liked the me-who-came-back better, too (although she was not yet then my wife). There's something to the stillnesses of life...

It's both about the destination and the journey. Where we get to is contingent on how we get there: I arrived at my meeting after a fruitful but fraught-filled day immediately after the last notes of the NPR transition music was over. I arrived with a quieter, stiller mind, happily thinking that it felt a bit like providence that I had driven at the time of such a good 1/2 hour of NPR. The meeting surely went differently than if I had arrived with a head full of worries. We were productive and more focused. We seemed to talk with each other, not at the other. It was like Piglet and Tigger had been left back on the highway and Pooh was able to just have a proper Tuesday like any other good day in the 100 Aker Wood...

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The following are excerpts from the talk show that I found so interesting along with a link at the bottom to a page where the TED talks are hosted if you feel interested to delve deeper:

Quiet:
NPR TED Talks on Nov. 13, 2015
Finding stillness in unexpected places.

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Susan Cain wrote a book about how introversion is undervalued, Quiet.

CAIN: One answer lies deep in our cultural history. Western societies, and in particular the U.S., have always favored the man of action over the man of contemplation. But in America's early days, we lived in what historians call a culture of character where we still at that point valued people for their inner selves and their moral rectitude. And if you look at the self-help books from this era, they all had titles with things like "CHARACTER: The Grandest Thing In The World." And they featured role models like Abraham Lincoln who was praised for being modest and unassuming. Ralph Waldo Emerson called him a man who does not offend by superiority.

But then we hit the 20th century, and we entered a new culture that historians call the culture of personality. You know, what happened is we had evolved from an agricultural economy to a world of big business. And so suddenly, people are moving from small towns to the cities. And instead of working alongside people they've known all their life, now they are having to prove themselves in a crowd of strangers. So quite understandably qualities like magnetism and charisma suddenly come to seem really important. And sure enough the self-help books changed to meet these needs. And they start to have had names like "How To Win Friends And Influence People." And they feature, as their role models, really great salesmen. So that's the world we're living in today. That's our cultural inheritance.

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Megan Washington is an Australian musician who finds peace through singing.

WASHINGTON: I have a problem. It's not the worst thing in the world - I'm fine. I'm not on fire. I know that other people in the world have far worse things to deal with, but for me, language and music are inextricably linked through this one thing and the thing is that I have a stutter. It might seem curious, given that I spend a lot of my life on the stage. One would assume that I'm comfortable in the public sphere and comfortable here speaking to you guys, but the truth is that I've spent my life up into this point and including this point, living in mortal dread of public speaking.

Public singing - whole different thing.

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John Francis started not talking for a day, it lasted 17 years.

RAZ: When you were out there on your own, was your mind clear? Was it full? Was it quiet? Was it loud? Like, what do you remember?

FRANCIS: Yeah, there were - there's a couple of things that when I'm walking - and I might be thinking of the road and where I'm going. But at some point, I realized that as I'm walking, I'm not thinking about the road and where I'm going. In fact, I catch myself not thinking. And then I'm thinking again, of course. But so there are long periods of times that I was just being on the planet and breathing. And I think maybe breathing has a lot to do with that.

RAZ: After 17 years of silence, John Francis got so good at listening to other people that he'd almost become a different person. And the voice he once had - kind of angry, a little combative, unsure - it was gone.

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Gavin Pretor-Pinney thinks we should all learn by keeping our heads in the clouds:

PRETOR-PINNEY: Well, you know, there are a lot of distractions (laughter). And in fact, there are probably more distractions these days than there've ever been. You know, you never stick on anything for long. And so I talk about cloud spotting being something that legitimizes doing nothing. And I had this the other day before a talk. I was kind of nervous. And I stepped outside and walked along, and then I saw a hummingbird come along and take some nectar from the blossom of a tree in front of me. And I just sort of locked on that and looked at it for a moment, and that was kind of enough to sort of center me. It's the same thing with - with clouds. I find that sometimes by paying attention to something outside of yourself is just enough for you to kind of find yourself centered again.

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Pico Iyer gave up journalism and started sitting in stillness 27 years ago and it has changed his life in profound ways.

IYER: I think you clear the anxiety by sitting still and addressing it and seeing it come and go in some ways. But you're absolutely right. When I go and sit still at my desk as a writer for five hours every day, often those hours are agonizing. They're torture, and I think a monk would tell you that a large part of the time he spends alone in his cell is spent with doubt and darkness. But running around is never going to address those feelings very well. It's only going to evade them. And I think actually one of the things that you find if you sit still is those feelings of anxiety and all the sufferings and pains that every one of us know fall into a kind proportion.

Link to the NPR site with the TED videos.