The Importance of Equanimity

There was something quiet in the morning that unfolded. A cold wash of sun stippled through the trees onto the frayed linen bedspread. It was the kind of hush that made you feel the entire world had stopped to revolve around this moment. Everything and nothing enclosed in a single room beside the lake. Maybe it was the water. Even as a kid, I'd felt it was a conduit before I'd learnt the word. A way of reaching something I couldn't but ought to find. There was a loneliness that wore at the edges of my fingertips as I stared out over the windowsill. I was struck by the stillness, expecting absolutely nothing and something extraordinary all at once. Some semblance of life in the trees, some quiet sound to break the silence. Nothing stared back at me, and the loneliness moved to the centre of my chest.

Hiraeth, I think they call it, a longing for a home that never was and cannot be. One of my first memories is my mother wanting to go home when we were standing in the centre of our house. I asked what she meant, and she replied, "Home" as if the word alone settled the matter. I hadn't fully understood at the time, but as I got older, I found myself filled with the same sensation. It is strange to feel out of place when you are where you've always been. That morning I'd resolved to go out on the river whatever the weather but I found myself grateful for the clear sky and soft wind. The wooden dingy was weathered and hadn't been used for years, so I half expected it to sink as I pushed it off the shoreline. I stepped into the centre with a lingering trepidation but soon found myself rowing to the middle of the lake. There was truly nothing here. Even where the wind blew, the water did not ripple. The oars barely disturbed its slumber, and I soon found myself motionless and staring aimlessly into an empty sky.

I'd come to seek this stillness, the kind of emptiness that makes all things full by contrast. What did I want in finding it? More. The only rational answer I can give and the only thing I'd ever really sought. I reached the opposing shore and pulled the little boat up the bank. Here there were only trees and sky, and nothing but my footsteps betrayed the constancy of nature. I walked for a time until I found a clearing strewn with small rocks and branches. The wooden tips of the logs were burnt, and I found myself annoyed that someone had discovered this place before I had. A flash of metal broke the charcoal, and I lent down to pull it from the ash.

It seemed both remarkable and routine to find a watch here. Someone could've easily left it, having not noticed it slip off their wrist into the campfire or deciding it wasn't worth a burn to retrieve it. The heat had cracked the face, and the leather strap was scorched, but it was equal parts distinguished and distressed. I slipped it onto my wrist with a mental note to take it to a repairer once I headed back. Whether or not it was fixable, I'd grown attached to my unlikely find and resolved to keep it either way.

I kicked my feet through the dust, hoping to find some other vestige of life that remained. I think it's a natural curiosity to feel watched when you're alone. Some residual evolutionary fall-back to keep you on your toes. Finding nothing, I continued through the trees determined to find someplace as yet uncharted. The walk blended into itself, and the scenery melded into an unbroken canvas of verdure and shadow. It might have been only minutes or a few hours, time seemed inconsequential here and could've easily ceased to pass without notice. The air was heavy and dark, soft with the dew from the trees and bound in a dusky hush. I was filled with the sensation that this place was as it had always been, retired and unbothered by the press of the outside world. There was no way to tell how long I had been walking, and my chest ached from breath. It was surely time to head back, and I resolved to rest for only a few minutes. Here even the sun was blocked from the sky, leaving nothing to the forest floor but twisted roots far older than any person who had walked here.

I leant against the trunk of the largest tree and slumped to the ground. It was a relief to sit in the softness of nothing. I placed my hands outstretched to the side and closed my eyes. Sleep washed over me, and I awoke to find I had lost hours beneath the leaves. Dusting sleep from my eyes, I opened them to find a small black notebook placed gently in my lap. I looked over my arms and hands for any sign of injury or disturbance, but the only discernible anomalies were the notebook and the watch I found earlier. A small note had been placed in the opening pages, and I lifted it from the black leather casing. The notebook was at least as old as the watch and had the same rough yet refined gravity. The papers edges were scorched, a soft blanket of ash slightly obscuring the words, and I brushed the dust aside to study it further.

"You will find what you seek when what you seek can't be found. Home is not a place but a memory."

I half thought to leave them both and run from the scene as fast as my feet would take me. The ball in the centre of my chest welled to a wave of dread, and I felt my heart would never slow. Surely, some rational explanation for this existed, some clear and simple experience that felt foreboding but was really commonplace. Perhaps someone was walking through the wood, found the notebook and assumed I'd most likely dropped it. A good samaritan trying to return a lost possession to the only other person within a mile. I got up and began the long walk back to the lake and cabin. It was darker now, and the hush of dusk had settled giving way to twilight. The night was undoubtedly even more beautiful than the day, but even the first kindling of stars did nothing to sway my sense of unease. After what felt like days, I found myself back at the edge of the lake and noticed the dingy looked somehow even more battered than it had this morning. Dislodging it from the shoreline, I rushed across the lake determined to get back to the cabin before the last of the sun left the sky.

Walking through the wooden door, a tide of relief washed over me as I crossed across the floorboards and held to the safety of indoors. I placed the worn notebook on the corner of the desk and collapsed into the soft linen sheets. A thud crept into my consciousness, followed by another until I finally discerned that the sounds were not part of a dream but someone knocking outside. I stumbled in and out of sleep across the floor and turned the brass handle of the door. It creaked with an ache as it opened, but the same stillness greeted me as yesterday. Perhaps I'd only imagined the knocking. I brushed the haze of sleep from my eyes and looked across to see a man standing by the edge of the lake. Stepping out across the cracked porch, I called out my apologies for not hearing him earlier. He seemed an older gentleman, his once jet hair peppered with grey and his tall figure twisted like the oaks surrounding the shore.

"Please, it was my intrusion in disturbing you, " He began. His voice was wizened and evoked a time long gone. His cracked umbra jacket was a gnarled leather, and his brow was furrowed with some as yet unspoken anxiety.

"I was hoping you might help me, I've lost something remarkably precious, and as the only house for miles, this seemed the only likely place I might find it." He continued. His voice hung in the air long after he finished speaking and echoed into the clearing.

"It's a watch you see, it belonged to my grandfather, and I dropped it some time ago by the lake." His eyes fixed wistfully at my wrist, and it seemed an unusual coincidence that he should find himself here. Some happy accident of fate or some strange unlikelihood by design. Sensing my hesitation, he paused to produce a folded ash stained paper from his pocket.

"I can offer you a reward, as much as you could ever need or want," He mused. The fractured watch glass reflected the sun across the lake, and I unfastened the catch to hand it to him. There was a sadness in his eyes I couldn't place as his knotted fingers reached to take it from me. His hands shaking, he placed the paper in my hand and looked hopefully as I unfurled it.

"Sometimes a value isn't known until it's lost," He murmured with heavy eyes and a weighted sigh.

The rest of the conversation was lost in his adamancy and watch in hand, he was soon out of sight and down the road. I walked back across to the cabin, and inside the thin etched doorway. The air was cool today despite the warmth of the sun through the window. The lake, still as ever, gazed back at me and the little boat buffeted along the edge of the shore. I was struck by how little seemed to change here. Content my unlikely find had brought an old man some peace, I sat at the desk to study the little black notebook that had crossed my path the day before. The pages were all but blank, and despite my earlier misgivings, I leafed through in the hope of finding some name or hint of its previous owner. The last page seemed thicker than the others, and I carefully prised the sheets apart to find a photograph stuck by the edges.

Clear ashen eyes peered at me through a maze of charcoal hair. Even in black and white, the umbra jacket cut an unmistakable figure against the backdrop of the shimmering lake. Every detail was the same, down to the dingy battered yet steady by the edge of the water. The man was younger in this photo, his eyes not yet touched by sadness, and I envisioned his voice lighter and filled with the melody of youth.

I turned the photo over in my hands to find a worn black script in the corner.

"A moment can be spent but not earnt. A second can be lost but never won. Here nothing passes, so everything must stay."

The air hung unmoving, and the lake sat still as poured glass on the horizon. All around lay the hush of summer as the sun held fixed to the sky.