Peace.

I seek peace.
At least that’s what I tell myself. But peace is a concept oversold to us for free. Probably online or in those books that described peace as the one thing that gives you clarity, epiphanies or maybe even life-changing ideas.
I seek peace with a pursuit to that mental clarity…

With the hope for ideas and groundbreaking thoughts…
So is it really peace that I seek??

Well, I’m not so sure…
What I want is to have my thoughts come to me in a line… One by one, organized as neatly as my sock drawer.
I seek peace, after failing to acknowledge that previously my stints with peace haven’t been too fruitful… I’ve been to a place where I could hear my breath,

It was peaceful, But I felt the birds chirping out were too loud… The feeling of a striking calm is was too much for me to handle really.
That Peace? It was natural.. Alas! clarity? not so much.

I wanted for so long to be in a place like that, to finally cut down the commotion of a city ringing constantly in my ears.. the chaos that was keeping me from seeing and living in tranquility. But when i was there, this place made my mind less and less peaceful by each minute… the more I stayed the more my mind talked… the more it questioned and more chaotic it became.

Now…. I wanted peace from that peaceful place.

Was it really true that peace made your mind clear? I started tracing my mind where i got this idea really? Was it a book? Maybe the internet….

Peace was making my mind more crowded in thoughts than ever.. I felt panicked I felt overwhelmed. Peace seemed to give me much more anxiety than clarity I’d say.
So off course I gave up… I quickly tried to shun away from the quiet of nature. I comfortably filled it up with my Netflix sounds and Prateek Kuhad songs, until it felt familiar, until it felt my kind of peaceful.

And in the background chatter of reality TV shows did I really understand what was it that I was seeking.
Peace. Yes.
But not from the place I lived but from this brain that constantly thought it needed to keep telling me stories.. that it constantly needed to talk and keep me entertained. A mind that felt the need to argue, discuss and express every tiny feeling I had. Every little new stimulus I felt… In this case it was the nature’s lap. For a city kid, this can be a totally new feeling.

It was ironic that I felt peaceful while hearing songs at full volume, watching the most absurd TV shows I could find or even in a loud, chaotic, crowded bus on the way back. I knew what they meant when they said peace aligns with your thoughts.
It wasn’t peace that did all that.
It was a mind tired from the pursuit of peace, giving up on the chase, resting in the solace of familiar sounds and observing your thoughts. Peace doesn’t really have to be in a place. Peace has to be where you have the comfort of the familiar, quiet or loud. Peace comes from asking yourself what truly matters. And It comes when you finally answer those questions. Trust me that’s not easy too. It does take a lot of courage. But it has to come from within..
My ‘Peace’ was within.

And surprisingly I had found that out in the loudest place.