Today is my “Sunday” – Cory and I start the workweek on Tuesday. So this Monday morning (afternoon) we slept in as usual, lazied about, laughed. Maddie was adorable.

Sitting on the couch now, Cory is munching toast. Crunch. Crunch. We haven’t opened the blinds yet today, and the bright sun is fighting to get inside the room. The apartment is cool, the air conditioning is quiet and the ceiling fan is on low. The leaves of the potted plants are dancing in the fan-wind and the long blinds of the tall windows are gently going patter-tap against one another.

I’m watching the light filter into the room through the opening and closing blinds – a tiny march of narrow sunbeams along the worn, red throw-rug below.

Cory is on his laptop (keys pitter-pattering) and I’m sipping coffee. The many computers in the room hum and the refrigerator grumbles in the background…

And I realize, suddenly but with a sense of knowing as if I’ve known it all along and just finally remembered it – this is calm.

This is calm.

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Where has this been all my adult life? How did I ever function without it? The deep calm of my early childhood sits with me now, like a cocoon, and everything is easy, and new and interesting and fun. It’s not always impenetrable, but it’s there, and it makes me feel so whole.

How ironic is it that my name, Shanti, means “peace.”

My 25th birthday is approaching and I’m beginning to think I’ve spent this entire quarter century simply searching for calm – for peace: peace from my constant ideas and detailed thoughts, peace with my family, peace instead of the hundreds of obligations I somehow get myself into by wanting to do too much. I’ve been searching for calm.

Now, meditating serenely on my thoughts, two states away from my (loving, amazing) crazy family, with few obligations except those I mean to have… I find myself, sitting here, dazzled by the little sunbeams filtering into the living room and by this incredible sense of peace sitting in my stomach and in my heart.

This calm is new and exciting. It is refreshing and relaxing, and incredibly empowering. It feels like I’m knowing myself for the very first time.

In order to teach peace, you have to know peace.

It’s from this calm center that anything is possible.

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Tags: cory, deep thought, mindset, musings, self-improvement, universal concepts