Do I hear the whisper of emptiness?

There’s a moment I’ll never forget. It was a quiet afternoon in Eglisau. The kind of stillness that wraps around you like a blanket you didn’t know you needed. I sat by the Rhine river, as I often do, and watched the water flow by – so calmly, so effortlessly. I thought, “This is peace.” But then, as I sat there, I heard the distant hum of a chainsaw cutting through the silence. A part of me wanted to get upset, but I stopped. I just sat and listened. Funny thing was, the sound didn’t ruin my peace at all. It didn’t disturb the quiet of the river or the soft rustling of leaves. It was simply there. The more I resisted it, the louder it seemed. But when I accepted it, it became very quiet.

I realized something that day: peace doesn’t come from the absence of noise or chaos. It comes from being in the moment, as it is, without judgment. We often think of peace as something we achieve, like a goal to be reached, but in truth, it’s already here—like the river, like the chainsaw, both existing side by side. Peace doesn’t require the world to be perfect. It simply asks us to stop adding stories to what is.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying you shouldn’t have an opinion or feel frustrated sometimes. Life’s messy. But perhaps the trick is in noticing when the frustration starts to own you, instead of the other way around. That’s when you begin to notice how restlessness is like a storm in a teacup—always brewing in our minds, but it’s just an illusion. You could spend a lifetime chasing it down, but the more you chase it, the more it slips away. It’s like trying to catch the wind in your hand.

So, I try to remind myself: when my mind starts to swirl with all sorts of thoughts, I let it swirl. I don’t need to stop it. I don’t need to control it. And, strangely, the more I let go of trying to control the storm, the calmer it becomes. Maybe that’s the trick? I find the following texts helpful, which I am constantly revising and adding to: