Piece of Mind

You have a house. It’s neither too big, nor too small. It sees mild summers and bitter winters. But you like your house. It is comfortable, it is cozy, and it is exactly what you need. However, you cannot ignore the feeling that something is lacking. So you start exploring that feeling to understand what is lacking.

You decide you need a nicer house in a nicer location. One day, you chance upon a brochure advertising a beach house in Florida. It appears perfect. It is a little beyond your means, but you are enamored. You must have that house. You go to Florida, take one look at the house and the location, and decide it is what you need. It looks very nice, appears to have sturdy construction, and not one thing seems out of place. Matter of fact, it is too perfect, if there could be such a thing. And it is priced low considering how perfect it is. You are too fascinated by it to notice these points – they are on the periphery of your consciousness, and are flicked away with effortless ease.

You buy the house and move in. For a little while, everything is great. Then one day all hell breaks loose. A hurricane hits the house. It blows away the roof, and tears down the walls. You sit on the wet sofa, wondering what just happened. But your sheer optimism forces you to ignore the obvious and focus on rebuilding the house. You put in your blood, sweat, and tears, and rebuild the house. There are a few tiles missing in the roof, but that’s fine. The location is great, after all.

For a little while, things are fine. Thanks to a few missing tiles in the roof, the floor gets a little wet when it rains.  But you clean it up and move on. Then the hurricane hits again. This time it wipes out the whole house. You are left wondering about your decision for the first time since you moved into the house. But you are not ready to give up. After all, the location is great! So you build the house again. There is a gaping hole left in the roof this time. You try to get the hole repaired, but that section of the roof is weak. The room gets flooded whenever it rains, and the floor takes a while to dry up.

Then the hurricane starts hitting the house twice a week. You are shell-shocked and left bewildered. You build and rebuild, but the foundation gets weaker after every hurricane, and the house is lacking a few essential components every time it comes back up. You are exhausted, but are stubbornly focused on rebuilding because after all, the location is great. When it rains, there is heavy water-logging. The floor never dries up. You wade from one room to the other.

Then one day a Category 5 hurricane hits the house. Not only does it blow away the house completely, it wipes out the foundation too. You move back to your original house, but are still left longing for your beach house. But now you are extremely cautious, and finally decide to do some exploring. While you are in Florida, you are hit by the hurricane again. Then you are confronted by the obvious – the location is great, but the weather is extremely unpredictable and highly destructive. Then you realize that it is not the weather which is the issue, it is the climate! You were too busy focused on your beyond-perfect beach house and awesome location to think about anything else.

Not only are you back to liking your original house, you also realize that you never really lacked anything. It is exactly what you always needed. What value is location if the house itself cannot stay up?

Peace of mind does not require happiness in addition, it IS happiness. 

Shamelessly borrowing this concept from Edgar Allan Poe: Happiness without peace of mind is simply happiness. Without peace of mind or the recognition that you have peace of mind, color becomes pallor, man becomes carcass, and home becomes catacomb...