To most people, the word “peace” brings to mind jumbled images of white doves, ceasefires, and Nixon saying something about honor. It’s one of those salt-and-pepper words—politicians love to season their speeches with it, but it’s so common that no one stops to think about what it really is. Even the Oxford English Dictionary neatly avoids saying what it is by beginning every one of its definitions of peace with the words “freedom from… .” This implies that peace is not so much a state in itself as it is the lack of something—whether that something is war, conflict, rock n’ roll music or two-year-olds. My conception of peace extends this idea. Peace is, for me, the absence of mental commotion. I have felt it on a windswept beach at dusk, and while falling asleep next to a loved one. It is the moment when there is no past or future, only an absorbing present that through its uniqueness or beauty temporarily clears my mind of everything else.
The human mind travels distractedly down the path of life. On its journey, it skips, stumbles, dances, strains, plods, laughs and loves. It peers back at what has passed, analyses and gropes for what is near, and most of all strains to see what lies ahead. It never stops moving, never rests, never ceases its planning and remembering and wondering. And it’s a good thing, too, for without all that motion, the mind would never get anywhere. Too much mental torpor would soon be boring and stifling—minds require changes of scenery. But at the same time, a few minutes’ pause along the road just to enjoy the immediate countryside can be wonderfully refreshing. Such moments of pleasure in sheer existence are precious simply because they are so rare. But occasionally, a particular instance will be so arresting, so special, that it absorbs all of the thoughts and senses. What was passed long ago and what lies around the next bend are forgotten. The mind rests, is at peace—and the respite gives it renewed strength to go on.
Many things have triggered such pauses along the road for me. Music is one reliable source—often, while playing or listening to something like Bartok or Beethoven, a tingle will pass through my body, as though my entire nervous system had heaved a deep sigh of contentment—all because the music, at that moment, was somehow right. And for a musician, nothing can quite compare to the split-second following a symphony’s finale, when you and the other flush-faced players send forth the last glorious note and it swells to fill the room, resounding into the farthest corner of everyone’s soul—the conductor poised on the upbeat, capturing and holding the music in a silence that is not a silence, while no one breathes or thinks or moves until the baton drops and the applause begins. To me, that spellbound instant is a moment of peace.
Physical exertion also brings my mind to rest. Rock-climbing gives me peace. When I’m clinging to a vertical face several hundred feet off the ground, all I’m concentrating on is my next move. I stop thinking of anything before or beyond that, and a lot of mental clutter disappears. Once, halfway up a climb in Yosemite, I reached a place where it seemed impossible to continue. Life suddenly became very basic—there was gravity, the warm granite, and me. And I had only one thought at all—to go up. I’m still not terribly sure how I got past that place, but a few minutes later I pulled up on the last hold and was done. Sitting on that rock in the warm sunshine, I felt totally at peace. For the moment, life was simple. I had finished the climb, and it was a beautiful day. Nothing else seemed to matter right then.
Most of all, I feel peace in the wilderness—it has a powerful tranquility that affects me very deeply, especially if I am alone. I once sat on a lichen-splotched boulder perched in a Rocky Mountain valley for several hours with scarcely a thought or feeling drifting through my head. The curved sky and soft sunshine embraced me; I heard but did not listen to, the constant gentle roar of the stream below, or the cries of the dark-headed jays above. I saw but did not watch the spray of whitewater crashing about a certain boulder, or the bouquets of alpine color shivering in the cool morning breeze. I was surrounded by the smell of the firs and ponderosas, but I didn’t particularly notice—I only breathed deeply and absorbed their scent naturally, as though I had been a mountain creature all my life. I could have been a sleepy marmot coming out to bask in the early sun, for all the conscious thinking I did. For those few hours, I didn’t wonder— I just was. And that, I believe, is when I felt the most at peace of all.