If you can sit in silence while all around is chaos...

I am sitting on the floor surrounded by cardboard boxes full of, well I am not sure what is in them because they are identical and we didn’t label them when we filled them, most of them are books though. There are bags full of rubbish to be dumped. A mountain of old bank statements we don’t know how to dispose of, shoes, clothes, pots and pans still to pack. Bedding, beds, chairs. Bits and pieces that we had previously packed in the unlabelled identical boxes but now find we need to use again. There is paperwork we need that is nowhere to be found.

Oh and I have a book to write, somehow.

Two weeks ago we went from Wales to Wandsworth in London (a bus, a train, a tube and another train ride away) to be interviewed and hand in our paperwork for our application for French long stay visas. It was cold here and hot there so our clothes were all wrong. It was expensive and tense. At the desk being interviewed I was told I’d messed up the paperwork, neglected to print out something from the visa application website that I should have done, I had to find a computer in the Visa centre, log into my account. My password was one of those immense automatic ones that had been generated by computer. I didn’t even know what to was so I had to reset that. With immigration staff looking over my shoulder. Find the right paperwork online fill it out again and print it then back to the head of the queue. Arriving once again at the desk to be interviewed I was told that Peggy’s application did not exist. I had tried a few weeks previously to do the online stuff at home but their system crashed and her application number had been deleted.

But, they emailed the French embassy and we went to wait again on the plastic chairs because they might or might not respond today. But they did, quickly, and they accepted a new application! Hot and exhausted we went back the hotel, it was not a trip that could be done in one day, we drank some wine and ate some food and relaxed. Then we waited for the trains to start running again after an accident on the line and caught the train and the tube and the other train where I closed my eyes and immersed myself in the rocking and the clackety clack as we crawled back north.

… and we waited for our passports to be returned with, or without, the stamp, French bureaucracy is multilayered, arcane and impermeable. We had no idea if we would be accepted. After a week our passports came back with beautiful big stickers in them, we are going to France. We drank a bottle of pink champagne that had been waiting in the fridge for good news.

Leaving to live permanently in another country, is a bit challenging. There are the aforementioned boxes, stuff we have to decide if we really want to drag over the water or does it just add pointless complexity. I am all for dumping everything overboard, apart from that old sofa, oh and those two chairs that I’ve had for years and… and… and… There are bank accounts to close because some companies won’t let you operate a UK account from overseas and some who do, dealing with direct debits, standing orders, medical stuff to organise, (when you get to be 68 there is nearly always medical stuff to organise.) A removal company to take our furniture, we need to be here in Wales when they come to load up and then be there in France when they arrive to unload. Boats to book. And so on. I think there’s more, I’m sure there is something else I have to do, can’t for the life of me think what it is. Oh, I have to improve my French because all the paperwork, all the websites everything is of course in French. Not just any old French (‘bonjour madame je vais prendre une baguette tradition s’il vous plait.’) but very formal French legaleese with subclauses and tenses not even French people use. And then of course there is the interview at the prefecture to convert the visa into a residence card, and the medical, and the French healthcare system, and the language test…

When life is chaos, you need the silence most.

Sitting on my mat this morning surrounded by the boxes and bin bags and French books was not ideal. I like clear empty spaces. I do not thrive in clutter. But meditation is not a luxurious thing, it is not about what you like and what you don’t like, it is a very basic thing that goes beyond liking and not liking, that flies above them and looks down smiling at those silly little desires and fears. When you go into the silence you see the grand opera in all its beautiful silly drama. The inner smile returns. The blood pressure falls. The heart settles, the muscles relax, the mind becomes clear and the game reveals itself. Life becomes better.

So here is a little exercise. Close your device, lower your eyes, sit upright but comfortable where you are and listen to the birds sing or the leaves rustle, or the distant chainsaw or railway line, whatever you can find - just listen, don’t comment, label or think, just listen. After about 15 minutes you will go into the silence. Stay there for as long as you like and when you come out into the daily world, bring the silence with you. It makes life good. Makes it real.

Be Happy.

Much love

Marc

This is a pic of my house in France.

Oh and google ‘If’ by Rudyard Kipling, if you don’t already know it.