The Home Needs Fixin

I left the castle I lived in for three years in the Hollywood Hills last month. It was a magical place, and I left for a variety of different reasons, but one of them was that the house needed work done on it and the army of construction workers and insane sounds were starting to disturb my peace...so I moved into a lovely home in Topanga Canyon, quiet, peaceful, near the ocean, and hiking. It was perfect...until the home owners decided that this house needed work done. The men raced in, the house was wrapped in plastic, there were no doors on my room, new floors were being put in. It was basically my worse nightmare, and ten times worse then the construction I had left at the castle. I stayed with friends for a few days, and cried for what was wrong with me that a team of construction workers were following me where ever I went. Then I remembered a story I was told by a monk when I was living at a monastery in Mount Shasta. He told me when he first joined the monastery everyday the master he was training under asked him to change rooms, it drove him crazy especially because he didn't ask any of the other monks to move....just when he would start to get settled in the master would kindly ask him to move to another location. He kept doing it so finally the young monk began to tolerate it, then he accepted it, then he didn't mind it, then he even looked forward to what room he would get next. Then the master decided he that he didn't need to change rooms anymore because it no longer bothered him. Ahhh...

I came home the other day and looked at the nice new floors, and rocked out to the loud music being blasted by my new friends that were doing construction, asked questions about how they did what they were doing, and joked that we could check our email while sitting on the toilet because all the computer stuff was sitting in the bathroom. What a time saver! Alas, maybe the homes did need fixin but I think the real fixin was the home on the inside. Find the center in the storm, find peace in chaos. That's the real task.

It is easy to be at peace when there is nothing to disturb your peace, it is hard to be at peace when a team of people are there disturbing it. But, that is the way of the Urban Samurai... ; )