Peace of Work

It has taken me a long time to admit it, but I have a problem with society’s picture of peacefulness. I don’t trust the tranquility touts of my generation. I’m not taken in by meditative moments in meadows (my calling is alliterative sentence-writing, obviously).

Every time I see a photo of someone sipping coffee by themselves in a sundrenched café with an accompanying caption about #stillness, #quietude, #peace, or something of that ilk I turn into Dwight K. Schrute. “FALSE,” I state aloud. I can appreciate wanting to be the inspiration for someone else to embark on their own journey of rest and relaxation, but when I see those self-timed photos, think of the positioning of the camera or iphone, acknowledge the framing, and take note of the just-so positioning of the coffee and reading material in the shot, it’s not lost on me that an effort was made. And that posturing, the playing to one’s audience, it’s WORK. What I have always struggled to wrap my head around is this contrived demonstration of relaxation that seems to spill out of the pores of my generation. It’s like the question of the tree falling in the woods: if no one sees you living your best life, did you even live it?

A professional background in entertainment production and development helped me see a bit of the forest for the falling trees: there’s mass confusion between attention and connection. You’d be surprised how many folks don’t mind hiring a camera crew with money they don’t have just for the promise of the dopamine hit that “really being seen and getting through to someone out there” brings when the option of striking up a conversation with a stranger remains free and open to them yet never accessed. But getting to know someone, being their friend, opening up your life to someone else - it’s work. Not hired, not paid, but it’s work nonetheless and we seem to be skirting it in order to present as someone strangers might like to crawl inside the skin of and walk around instead… or maybe there’s a less creepy way to talk about modern celebrity, I don’t know.

All this has me digging my heels in on a central thought. Peace is work. Being at peace requires one to work on themselves and toward something larger. Being at peace with others requires one to work on themselves, cultivate vulnerability, AND shoulder the emotional needs of their community. None of it requires taking a selfie with our eyes closed and captioning it (bizarrely!) “Meditative Moment,” yet modern times would have me fooled. I appreciate the pushback, as well, that peace can’t be work - work is work and peace is our reprieve from it all, but “it all” is happening all the time and I’ll take being part of it over the alternative any day of the week. Peace, I think, is less a fleeting moment by a babbling brook with a… is that a flower crown? Better put it on and snap a picture! To me, it’s more of a runners high - a moment of comfort and trust in your ability and surroundings, part self-earned, part community-sponsored that lets the work already put in and the work that lies ahead melt luxuriously into the intentionality of the here and now.

I can see why we want to bottle that and sell it to one another, but the irony of our lives might be how attainable small bites of peace are in our day to day if we open ourselves up to the work necessary to recognize them. I’m still very much working on myself in this context, but I can tell you as someone who once had a comprehensive list of all affordable spa and massage options in the city of New York organized across google sheets so as to never lose access to them that there’s the manufactured peace the lives in aromatherapy-saturated wellness retreats and there’s the kind that rides the swell of laughter between friends who know you deep down. I’m totally going to continue to spend my money on the manufactured kind, but there’s no confusing it for its fleeting, hard-won, and organic counterpart.