STILLNESS

Real Estate Journal

STILLNESS

By Bill Barksdale, GRI Realtor®

I just finished reading travel writer, Pico Iyer’s book The Art of Stillness – Adventures in Going Nowhere. He wrote this profoundly life-affirming book short so it can be read in one sitting if you want. In my case, I read it over several days to savor and absorb the message. As Mr Iyer says “In an age of constant movement, nothing is more urgent than sitting still.”
Since my profession for nearly 30 years has been helping people sell and buy homes, I often think about what a “home” actually is. It’s certainly more than “real estate”, something attached to the Earth.

A home has as many different concepts as there are people. Ultimately, I suppose, it’s a kind of shelter. For some home is a card board box. For others a home is a sprawling multimillion dollar, big “something” that fits their ego needs. For most of us it’s something in between. All are shelter. What if a home is something more? What if it’s inside oneself? Of course it is to some extent inside you. Where do you feel sheltered?

Getting back to stillness, Mr Iyer points out the obvious. Most of us are connected virtually all the time in this new “electronic age”. Recently, on the very popular National Public Radio program Fresh Air hosted by Terry Gross, guest Geoffrey A. Fowler technology columnist for the Washington Post was interviewed. His research revealed how our electronic “personal assistants” such as Apple’s Siri and Google’s Alexa are actually listening to you all the time! Spying. They can even record what’s going on in the privacy of your home, car and other places, even when you are asleep!

We already know that everything you do on the internet, every phone conversation and text are recorded in some electronic database, but did you know that many of the apps you load onto your computer and smart phone also track, literally, your location and listen in on you? There are even devises like thermostats in your home that record when someone walks past it. Your wireless phone, computer and some security systems are also microphones and even cameras that allow those with the technology to hear and see what you are doing in your home!

Am I just paranoid or is this real? It’s real.

The Art of Stillness reveals that many technology CEO’s and developers take times when they “disconnect” because they realize that being connected all the time can make them crazy. I have felt that way myself, so I don’t stay connected all the time. My “smart phone” makes little beeps and boops that alert me when someone has sent me a message, often junk. I just don’t want to be connect that much. It’s not healthy.

Catholic monk writer and mystic, Thomas Merton, near the end of his life in the monastery, moved to an even more remote cabin far away from the main complex and even found that his remote cabin didn’t offer him the stillness he desired. There were no cell phones or personal computers in Merton’s day. His home was an attempt to go deeper inside on a more contemplative, spiritual journey. That journey doesn’t have to be religious. It’s a personal need to answer that, perhaps unanswerable question, “Why do I exist?”

I seldom listen to the “news” anymore because it’s become a grandstand for some truly evil people, at times, that just disturb my peace of mind. Media has become a tool to manufacture desire, fear and thoughts for stuff we don’t need in order to be human or happy. I have never joined Facebook because I read their 70+ page “privacy policy” which basically says when you use Facebook you have no privacy. It's my understanding that everything you do on it, and every “friend” you put on it, is recorded by the company and your personal information sold and used to create a profit center for the company. As I understand it, you even give them permission to look into unrelated files in your computer. Hope I wrong about that.  Unless it’s changed, that’s what you agree to when you click “I Agree”!

Stillness has a strong appeal for me. I’m currently reading a biography of the great 20th century artist, Williem de Kooning. It’s reminding me why art, all of the arts, are so essential to survival and maintaining freedom. Why do you think the arts are the first thing that governments and some corporate elites want eliminated from our schools? Art teaches independent thinking. Ironically, the creative process, the arts, also teach us how to invent and problem solve.

In my opinion if you want to know who wants to destroy the concept of “Liberty and Justice for All” just look at the membership of the organization American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). In my opinion, it’s a short-list of those who despise the foundation of
the United States of America, freedom. They’re doing a very effective job of reaching their goal. Trying to force you to think the way they do.  It’s easier to rob you of your freedom if you don’t think for yourself.

Stillness is really quite revolutionary. Disconnecting is a revolution. Is it possible? I don’t know, perhaps selectively. That’s something we, as a society have to think about. Perhaps we can identify the legislators and people in politics that create legislation that helps us maintain Equal Protection Under the Law. 

You’re not “making a statement” when you choose not to vote. You just prevent democracy from working. That’s your choice. If you let organizations like the sinister, in my opinion, ALEC decide for you you may not have a place to call home.

Read The Art of Stillness, or tune into Pico Iyer on YouTube. You may find answers, even home, in Stillness. Something to think about.

Bill Barksdale was a 2016 inductee into the Realtor® Hall of Fame. He is an agent at Coldwell Banker Mendo Realty Inc. He can be reached at 707-489-2232, bark@pacific.net