Walking through an outdoor marketplace in a small upstate New York town called Margaretville yesterday, I was not looking for anything in particular. Among the antique vases, old fashioned coke bottles, and rusty lamps on the tables of about fifty booths, was an occasional old looking book which begged attention, if only to check the publication date. I had a feeling there was something to bring home – but didn’t know what it was.
Walking the isles was a reprieve from the chaos of television, radio and the constant sensory overload of the recent tragedy in Minneapolis. I was “newsed-out” and distracted in recent days. So just being out in nature, among artists and vendors was relaxing.
Back to the tattered books. I merely glanced at most of them. I had come up for a five day retreat to be silent (meaning no news or small talk). Although book shopping is always the exception. That philosophy worked in my favor. As I browsed the isles of other peoples old stuff, I contemplated my full plate and some serious decisions that needed to be made (silence-interruptus). I wished that someone, (perhaps a sage or gypsy) would appear and give me all the answers to the business questions that were hammering on my brain. Couldn’t someone just tell me what to do?
I had a lingering feeling to head back to a table I had by-passed. Stumbling upon a 1940 first edition of the writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson, I opened up to a random page and found the following passage:
“All our progress is an unfolding, like the vegetable bud. You have first an instinct, then an opinion, then a knowledge, as the plant has root, bud, fruit. Trust the instinct to the end, though you render no reason. It is vain to hurry. By trusting it to the end, it shall ripen into truth and you shall know why you believe.” — Emerson, from the essay, “Intellect”
A few days of “getting quiet” had taken me to a deeper instinctive place, so I would pick up a book that would tell me once again - that no one was going to give me the answers! Instead, I’d have to go inside for the answer. It reminded me that we are all connected to our deeper truth if we can just get quiet enough to listen (with a little help from Emerson).
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