I have no idea if you might be interested in the day to day doings of living in Silence…but I thought perhaps I might write it down, if only for myself.
Yesterday I responded to an add placed on Craigslist for a sales position, myself and four other men were in the room, and it was clear the company would hire anyone who would take the time to show up. That is often the case with a straight commission, in-home, one-sit, sales company. Sears hired everyone who walked in, so did Home Depot’s Landscape affiliate, and their Kitchen partner as well.
It is a difficult type of job, very few folk can handle the straight commission while also paying for gas to get you to and from Tucson, and Flagstaff, and such, and then there are the weird hours – as you work when everyone else is off. And the frustration of driving for two hours, or four hours, only to find your customer not home, or not interested, or thinking you were supposed to be the repair guy, not the sales gal.
None of that created difficulty for me, and though I have no more interest in solar water heaters than I did in air conditioning, I was prepared to take the job and do it to the best of my ability, just as I had done with HVAC, until I began to ask some deeper questions.
I have always been a questioning sort, and soon it was revealed that they are selling the units based on an emotional response to the story they tell the customer.
Here is where I opted out…
The manager in his enthusiasm to share his success with me, began telling me how they position the sale as a “right action” sort of purchase, that our troops are sacrificing life and limb when “we”, the American Homeowner, could do the “right” thing and get foreign oil production needs down by purchasing solar source water heaters, and something called “air duct sealing”. (Having just been asked to leave the heating and cooling industry, if “air duct sealing” were a legitimate type of product line, I doubt seriously that Sears would be leaving dollars behind on the table).
Now I told you that preamble, not to talk about the outer events but to describe the newly discovered and wonderfully dramatic difference in decision making, when the mind is Silent and still.
You know of course, that I appear to be in financial peril - let’s be clear about that - there is very little in my bank account and the unemployment opportunity landscape is no different than it was five months ago, when I was so grateful to be hired by Sears. What is dramatically different… is the stability of, and access to, developing Silence in my life.
I found the conversation about selling solar water heaters as an act of troop support and patriotism, to be a very distasteful idea. It smacks of borderline hyperbole, and is not something I would be able to bring myself to say.
In years gone by, with an eye to the future and the potential for going hungry, I would have had a lively, demanding, and difficult internal discussion about taking this job and making the best of it. The inner dialogue would have been, something along the line of…”I can’t do that, I can’t say that”…turning into…”but you have to, what if no other job comes along!!! At least there is the potential to make a living” and so on, and so on.
I can’t bring to bear with the written word the level of difficulty and emotional disturbance this internal argument, would have been shot through and through with, in days gone by. I would have argued with myself relentlessly. “Must do/can ‘t do”, would have worn me ragged, kept me up some portion of the night, and caused me to be sitting in that training room even as I am writing this.
Not so yesterday.
I left the room with the distaste of conversation that trades on men and women who have given their limbs and lives, so that this company can use their sacrifice as a means by which to make an “emotional sale”, sitting on my tongue and drove home in complete silence.
No sound, nothing…
I kept waiting for the pro v. con argument, that has accompanied every fork in the road decision I have ever had to make for an entire lifetime, to show up…and it just didn’t…
Silence on the drive home, silence in the bathroom brushing my teeth, silence on the pillow waiting to fall asleep.
I can’t begin to tell you how good that is, how restful, how wonderful, how liberating.
I don’t really understand it, not intellectually anyway. If I were guessing, I would say things like…my heart truly knows now, that there is no such thing as the “future” thus what may, or may not, happen did not weigh in on the decision. I would say that my heart simply would not allow me to say such nonsense to a homeowner, particularly when that nonsense trades so poorly upon another. I would say that my financial well being, like all other aspects of my life, cannot be controlled by me…and now that I am willing and capable of living in, and entirely embracing, the mystery that is life… there are no arguments to be made.
I would say that having lived a life where “I” was in the driver’s seat and deciding when to turn left, or when to brake, or when to accelerate…never brought one tiny iota of the peace I now experience, sitting in the passenger’s seat, where not being in control has become a thing of Joy, rather than a fearful, anxiety producing experience.
I guess that is as close as I might be able to get, to describing something that has no words, no concepts, and no language. It was decided the moment he told me how they sold them, and since there is no longer an “I” that must be argued with…I simply got in my car and headed home.
I have never before, in my lifetime, made a decision in that manner. And as I said, this might not be beneficial to you…but to me, it is like waking up in a brand new life.
So, today, after spending a good deal of time sending out resumes and interest letters, I decided to go to the dollar theatre and a leisurely walk, in the cool indoors of the mall.
I walked round and round, and here too, there was a very great difference in what used to be my “normal” experience.
It has only been a short while, that I have been able to look people “directly in the eye”. My norm was to look them in the chin…I don’t really know why, but I have always had difficulty looking directly into another’s eyes.
I noticed about six or so months ago that suddenly changed, I don’t know how or why, I just noticed that I was looking everyone directly in the eye.
So today, as I walked the mall inside an entirely silent mind, and with those who were willing to look me in the eye…we exchanged a small but quite wonderful moment.
Some smiled at me, some spoke, some nodded…but all were delicious in some indescribable way. Then a mother walked by with a baby in a stroller, the child was maybe 18 months, perhaps two years, I am not good at guessing ages…but she had that open and available stare, that so many children have.
She took my gaze and held on, like I had candy or something, her eyes were bright blue and sparkly – as young eyes so often are – and entirely frank. I, of course, was looking down at her and both her mother and I were moving fairly slowly, so we had a good long while to look at one another.
She grasped my gaze with both of her tiny bright eyes and held on, and as I watched her from inside a Silent mind, I felt a rising gladness to be looking at her. As that rising gladness became a source of well being in me…her little eyebrow shot up toward her hairline, in what could only be described as a quizzical look.
She had dark brows above her bright blue eyes, and it made the effect even more compelling. I have no idea if a child of her age could actually experience something as conceptual as puzzlement or bafflement, but she certainly appeared as though she was just that. As we passed one another, she leaned around in the comfort of her stroller and held my gaze for as long as was possible, until her mother had entirely passed me.
Her presence in my life, brief as it was, had great volume, mirth, and pleasure in it. And when there is not the pleasure of another’s eye in which I might gaze, I find that everywhere I go now, I look at the natural landscape. The trees draw me in, the cloudy skies of the monsoon season light me up, the colors of the desert under gray and bent light engage me absolutely, and I can barely look away.
Everything, everyone, every event, every moment is so fresh, so inviting, so enlivening, and so lovely.
Well that is all; I just thought I would report the day’s events…such as they are.
I wish you well…
Adayre R. Miller
8/30/11
photo courtesy of flickr photo sharing and Small Treasures, to see more of this artist’s work please follow this link…www.flickr.com/photos/88009649@N00/479928355/
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