One ordinary year, watched closely. Peace turned out to be hiding inside it.

1st of January

The first day of a new year dawns in soothing darkness. A sense of peace is present. A fascinating and sacred silence embraces the moment. The stillness within is beautiful, and the peace remains, even when noisy children are playing and running around. They occasionally argue and need their parents' attention, but even that does not disturb the peace experienced today.

The darkness of the winter is impenetrable. The sun barely rises at all during the day. However, there is something very serene in the dark embrace of mother nature. The absence of natural light somehow creates space for the absence of thoughts, in the same way as the absence of noise allows silence to emerge.

Fresh snow covers the ground. Seawater seeps through the layer of thin ice just a few metres away from the waterfront. Yesterday it was all immovable ice, and most likely it will be so again tomorrow when the air grows colder. The change in nature happens with a curious and inexorable certainty.

2nd of January

Driving to work for the first time this year. Short glimpses of the peace experienced yesterday appear in the mind, but they are only memories. They are not the experience. Thoughts try to reach for the peace, but only the reaching happens.

The mind tries to find value in the present moment by forcing the peace to come back. It has created a shining trophy of the inner stillness described by the memories of yesterday. The mind cannot understand that inner peace never comes by applying force. The peace within any moment is revealed only in the natural flow of the world, not in the efforts of trying to control that flow.

The traffic of the morning hours is intense. The headlights of numerous cars are flowing like an endless river of spherical lights in the surrounding darkness. Suddenly, amid the heavy traffic, it unfolds again: the stillness. A curious feeling always arises when the stillness reveals itself, because it includes a total cessation of thoughts. It always occurs without warning, without a personal investment of making it happen.

Everything that remains is the road, the car, the flow of headlights, and the dance of the traffic in general. There are no problems in the present moment, nothing to achieve, nowhere else to be, and nothing to resist or avoid.

3rd of January

Trembling hands and mild sweating while presenting the results of a project to a client. It is strange, because there seems to be no stress involved in the situation. The mind feels confident, and the client is most certainly satisfied. Nevertheless, the mind does not like the idea of stress in the situation, and maybe that is why the symptoms of stress occur.

While speaking and listening in turn, the attention is getting pulled elsewhere. The snowflakes slowly fall on the people walking in the street, and they pull the awareness like a magnet. Everyone seems to be in a hurry, for whatever reasons they harbour within. Many of them walk with blind eyes, sunken into the deep waters of their thoughts. Only a few seem to really notice the beautiful snowfall, even though every one of them is walking through and in it.

The snow keeps on falling. The dialogue about the project results continues.