View from the Pier

Seek not that the things which happen should happen as you wish;
but wish the things which happen to be as they are,
and you will have a tranquil flow of life.
- Epictetus, 55-c. 135 A.D.

Thingvellir, Iceland

We watched a young boy and his father race each other back and forth across a small footbridge over a ravine, gleefully shouting “Now I’m in Europe” when reaching one side, and “Now, I’m in America” on the other. The deep gash in the earth they pranced across was filled with translucent water, into which a handful of people on either side tossed coins, with intense and earnest expressions on their faces.

A scene that would have had us scratching our heads anywhere else made perfect sense here, where the world is literally slowly tearing apart. In Thingvellir, the slabs of our earth’s crust that we call continents are drifting away from each other at the speed our fingernails grow.

My husband Tom and I were doing our own version of Iceland’s “Golden Circle,” a kind of Nordic Ring of Kerry; Thingvellir was our last stop before returning to Reykjavik. Never mind not being able to resist going to a place called Thingvellir, this national park proved to be a place of breathtaking beauty, mind-bending geology and more.

The continent-tagging duo suffered from the common misconception that it is the Eurasian plate that abuts the North American in Thingvellir. A preeminent Icelandic geologist made clear to me that the plates in question are in fact the North American Plate and Hreppar Microplate. His tone of practiced patience in relaying this distinction was no doubt honed by an endless stream of confused hoi polloi for whom “Hreppar” meant nothing.

Thingvellir carries profound historic, political, religious and cultural significance for the Icelandic people, and is often referred to as the country’s very soul. Indeed, Thingvellir could be viewed as the equivalent of the U.S.’ Grand Canyon, Plimoth Plantation, and Capitol Hill, all rolled into one. In 930 A.D., Iceland’s settlers established an assembly at Thingvellir, called the Althing. Now recognized as one of the oldest surviving parliaments in the world, it was one of the earliest governments of the people, for the people. Thingvellir was also the site where Iceland adopted Christianity in the year 1,000.

Thingvellir is still very relevant to Icelanders today—it is the site where the country declared itself an independent republic in 1944. Fifty years later, 60,000 people, about a quarter of Iceland’s population, gathered at Thingvellir to commemorate that occasion.

The ravine in question was the “Peningagja,” or “money gorge.” Lore says that if you throw a coin into its crystal clear waters and can see it reach bottom, your money worries will be over. Since my visit coincided with Iceland’s economic meltdown, it seemed a wonder the crowd tossing silver into the abyss wasn’t bigger. Then again, maybe the sentiment was enough krona had disappeared into a big black hole.

Despite the implosion of an over-heated financial sector and the always present threat of the earth giving way below you—yesterday’s volcanic eruption was the second in the past month—Icelanders are happy people.  And you don’t need to just take my word for it. According to the World Database of Happiness, Iceland consistently ranks as one of the happiest countries in the world. In some surveys, it ranks number one.  I learned this by reading the hilarious and insightful “The Geography of Bliss” by Eric Weiner.  If you enjoy travel, or seek that elusive destination called happiness, check this book out.

When I take breaks from my rotation in admiring or envying “Eat, Pray, Love” author Elizabeth Gilbert, I am a Weiner wannabe. You have got to admire a self-professed grump to whom it occurs to traverse the globe, studying the cultures that popular science deigns as certifiably content. Read Weiner’s book for his take on what make Icelanders happy but I’ll share my own theory with you.

This past year has involved some tectonic shifts in how I view the world, all of which all can be boiled down into today’s quote from Epictetus. A Greek Stoic philosopher who was born a crippled slave, he divided everything into two categories: those we can control and those we can’t. The first category would include judgment, impulse, desire, and the like. The second category would cover things like volcanic eruptions, the economy, the car in front of me, my mother’s health and whether you like this essay.

Slow on the uptake, this important message finally made its way from my head to my heart through a half-century of daily lessons, big and small. It took me becoming sick and worn out from worrying over the everyday events of Life not going my way to understand that the energy I expended catastrophizing could be channeled to better use—and that then, just maybe, I might actually have more fun. It is a giddy and liberating feeling to recognize I don’t need to arm wrestle with the Universe over half as much as I thought I did.

What has taken 50 years to dawn on me was summarized in a two-hour PBS documentary I watched last night on the Buddha: Life is suffering, so you might as well laugh. I could debate with myself whether the program’s wisdom would have resonated so soundly if I had watched it when I was 16, or even three months ago. But that gets at the heart of the Buddha’s big breakthrough—thinking can be dangerous. God knows my mind can sometimes be a bad neighborhood indeed.

That’s true even though I enjoy my Dream existence today. I live by the ocean—a fantasy from my land-locked childhood. I write, travel, photograph—my schedule is largely my own. I have friends who value me and can kindly tell me when I am wrong. I know I have been a good daughter. I seek to help people when I can. I have a wonderful husband who I am given regular opportunities to appreciate anew.

One such occasion:

After quitting smoking a little more than two years ago, I gave myself license to substitute food for cigarettes. Nonetheless, not long ago, I awoke one morning and wondered how I had gained 40 pounds, despite a daily diet that included Dunkin Donuts blueberry muffins and chocolate chip cookies. After lots of false starts, I despaired of finding a work-out regimen I actually enjoyed, and could stick with. And then, transported by a song, I had a flashback to the 70s, and remembered I liked to dance.

In 1971, I had moved from a tiny hamlet in Western Massachusetts to Danville, Virginia, the Last Capital of the Confederacy, one of the world’s biggest mill cities, memorialized in Joan Baez’s “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down.” My first day of school at Langston Junior High was also early days in its desegregation—classes were canceled before first period due to the locker fires and cafeteria trays being flung like Frisbees down the hall. A few days later, things had settled down to the point that school was still in session at lunch time. I bravely headed to the cafeteria, terrified of facing the music—that I would need to sit down at a table with one of these strangers who all seemed so much more at ease than me, even with the chaos.

So I was astounded to walk into the enormous lunch room to see well-choreographed teams of two and three pushing the cafeteria tables and chairs against the wall. A duo dragged a jukebox away from the wall and fiddled around inside its back. The low groan of Al Green in the throes of “Love & Happiness” oozed around the cafeteria and the kids from the projects that surrounded Langston began to dance. Something inside me came alive and a smile of wonder and joy replaced my expression of abject fear.

A big black girl from one of my classes that morning caught me watching and came over, grabbed my hand and dragged me unto the cafeteria dance floor. Almost as if having an out-of-body experience, I saw myself—pixie hair cut, braces, 5’ 10” and 130 pounds soaking wet…rapturously shaking my booty. That girl, Tanya Mitchell, became my first friend in Danville. In fact, I had my first Kool cigarette with her, which brings me back to the here and now.

Remembering that joy of movement, I asked my husband Tom to make a compilation dance CD for me. He spent hours weaving together songs of the aforementioned Al Green, along with Earth, Wind & Fire, Blondie, Rankin’ Roger—music that is not his cup of tea, shall we say.  After a few weeks of blissfully burning calories to the music of my youth, well…I got bored. I began to resent having to slot in my free-form convulsions to Aretha, Marvin Gaye, Slye & the Family Stone. Thankfully, Tom was able to gently help me see that I had managed to turn dancing into drudgery.

My hard-won “aha moment” about the power of acceptance—50 years in the making—can disappear down into the abyss in a heart-beat. All it takes is a…flight delay, a friend not responding to an email, the realization that I can likely expect the same response as the last time to the most recent story I have submitted to the Silent Deep Space that is the Washington Post’s travel section…and I can quickly slip into a downward spiral.

The good news is that now I have points of reference on my emotional map—the massive mountains and deep gorges that I have traversed now offer me a new vantage point and some perspective. Like Icelanders in the land of the Midnight Sun, where days of close to 24 hours of sunlight are balanced by practically round-the-clock darkness, and powerful forces of nature can be both spooky and inspiring, I can take life as it comes, and remember that soul food tastes both bitter and sweet.