It is the end of August. Ferragosto is over, and the visitors have left Nardó. I think of this as adding to my sense of peace, and then I had a realisation:

This morning I was sitting in Caffè Parisi on Piazza Salandra in Nardò. I had Maui with me, as I usually do, which means that alongside contemplating the meaning of life, I also have to keep one eye on whether he is about to launch himself at a waiter carrying six coffees and a plate of pastries.

I had my coffee, a spremuta di arancia, a glass of frizzante water, and a rustico — that wonderful Puglian pastry filled with béchamel and tomato sauce. The rustico was mostly for Maui.

I was sitting there thinking about the day ahead. Nothing particularly profound. Just sitting. Watching. Being.

And for a moment, I felt completely peaceful.

Then I started watching the people around me.

Beside me was a couple with a beautiful little girl. She was probably approaching two, with the most extraordinary, glistening blonde hair.

Behind them were three women and a young girl. One of the women had just arrived at the table and announced some wonderful news: she was going to get married.

There was a little burst of excitement around the table.

Then behind them was a table of five or six Australians. They were talking.

Very loudly. And I mean very loudly.

And somewhere in the space of a few minutes, I realised something.

I had disturbed my own peace.

Not the Australians.

Not the little girl.

Not the woman getting married.

Not Maui.

Me.

First, I judged the Australians for being so loud. Then I started making up stories about the woman who was getting married.

Then I found myself awkwardly trying to help the little girl pet Maui.

I say awkwardly because I couldn’t decide if my Italian was good enough or if their Italian was good enough- I think they were Dutch, and the Dutch almost always speak English, but knowing this did not prevent me from making it awkward.

And suddenly I realised what I had done.

I had taken a perfectly peaceful moment — sitting with my dog, drinking coffee, drinking orange juice, watching the world go by and thinking about the day — and turned it into a soap opera.

There were characters everywhere.

The Australians.

The Dutch couple.

The beautiful little girl.

The woman who was getting married.

The waitress.

Maui.

And, of course, me.

I had created a whole cast of characters, each with their own imagined motivations and storylines.

And none of it was necessary.

The Australians were simply talking loudly.

The woman was just getting married.

The little girl was being a little girl.

Maui was being Maui.

And I was sitting there drinking coffee.

That realisation made me smile.

Because I have been thinking a lot about peace.

Not because I have found it.

Quite the opposite – I have a restless mind. I have peaceful moments, certainly. But I am increasingly interested in understanding what peace actually is.

As an artist, I think I am particularly interested in observation.

Looking.

Really looking.

And perhaps peace is connected to that.

Perhaps peace isn’t somewhere we eventually arrive.

Perhaps it is something that is already present, but which we often fail to notice.

The judge in our head

I have started to think that judgement may be one of the great killers of peace. Not judgement in the sense of making sensible decisions or recognising what is right or wrong.

I mean the constant internal commentary.

That’s too loud.

That’s annoying.

I should be doing something else.

I’m not doing enough.

They shouldn’t behave like that.

I wish this were different.

I need to get this finished.

What happens next?

We judge other people.

We judge circumstances.

And, perhaps most damagingly, we judge ourselves. Every judgement takes us a little further away from simply experiencing what is actually happening.

The Australians weren’t disturbing my peace.

My judgement of the Australians was disturbing my peace.

That distinction feels important.

Because I don’t think we can create a world in which nothing disturbs us.

People will be irritating. Plans will go wrong. Things will happen that we don’t like. Our minds will become restless. We will be sad, angry, frightened, excited, impatient and distracted.

That’s life.

So perhaps peace isn’t the absence of disturbance.

Perhaps peace is our ability to notice what is happening without immediately adding our judgement to it.

I am folding my shirt

Think about something incredibly mundane.

You are folding your shirt.

That’s all.

But your mind is already thinking about the next ten things you need to do.

You’re not really folding your shirt anymore.

You’re mentally ironing the next ten shirts.

You might be washing dishes, but you’re thinking about the email you haven’t answered.

You might be walking, but you’re thinking about where you have to be in an hour.

You might be having dinner with someone you love, but you’re thinking about tomorrow.

The physical moment is here.

But your mind has left.

And perhaps when the mind leaves the present, it also takes with it our ability to notice the peace that is already there.

This isn’t an argument for doing everything slowly.

It’s not an argument for mindfulness techniques or sitting cross-legged on a mountain.

You can fold your shirt quickly.

You can work hard.

You can have an extraordinarily busy day.

But there is a difference between doing what you’re doing and mentally living in what you’re going to do next.

And there is another difference between experiencing something and constantly judging our experience of it.

That is what I noticed this morning in Caffè Parisi.

I didn’t need to make the café more peaceful.

It already was peaceful.

I was the one creating the noise.

Five questions

So I started wondering:

If peace is something we can notice rather than something we have to achieve, what questions might help us notice it?

Not rules.

Not advice.

Not a five-step programme to become a better, calmer person.

Just five questions I might ask myself during the day.

1. What is peaceful in this moment?

Before I judge the moment, can I actually notice it?

What can I see, hear, feel or experience that is already peaceful?

It might be the sun on my face.

The sound of a bird.

The taste of coffee.

The warmth of a dog beside me.

Someone laughing.

The simple act of folding a shirt.

Perhaps peace is often there, but we are looking for something much bigger.

2. Where is my mind?

Am I actually here?

Or am I already living in the next thing I have to do?

Have I travelled backwards into something that has happened?

Have I travelled forwards into something that might happen?

I don’t necessarily have to bring my mind back.

Perhaps the first thing is simply to notice that it has gone.

3. What am I judging?

What story am I telling myself about this moment?

About another person?

About myself?

This isn’t good enough.

I’m not good enough.

They shouldn’t do that.

This should be different.

I should be somewhere else.

And perhaps the most important part of the question is this:

Can I notice the judgement without then judging myself for judging?

Because that would just create another layer of noise.

The moment is one thing.

My judgement of the moment is something else.

4. What am I trying to get past?

Am I actually doing this moment?

Or am I trying to get through it?

Am I folding this shirt?

Or am I trying to finish folding this shirt so I can get to the next thing?

Am I listening to this person?

Or am I waiting for them to finish so I can speak?

Am I drinking this coffee?

Or am I already thinking about what happens afterwards?

What happens if, just for a moment, I don’t need to get past this?

5. Can I be at peace without needing everything to be peaceful?

This may be the hardest question.

Because sometimes life isn’t peaceful.

Something may be unresolved.

Someone may be irritating.

Your mind may be racing.

You may be worried about tomorrow.

You may be carrying sadness from yesterday.

Perhaps peace doesn’t require any of those things to disappear.

Perhaps peace and restlessness can exist in the same moment.

Perhaps peace is not the absence of everything that disturbs us.

Perhaps it is the ability to notice what is here without needing it all to be different.

Some wiser people than me

I’m not pretending I have worked this out.

Far from it. But when I started thinking about these questions, I found myself going back to people who have wrestled with them for much longer and more deeply than I have.

Epictetus wrote:

“Some things are in our power and others are not.”

There is something liberating in that.

Perhaps peace begins when we stop spending our energy trying to control things that were never ours to control.

Marcus Aurelius wrote about the mind being disturbed by its own judgements.

That feels particularly relevant to my morning at the café.

The world was simply happening.

My mind was adding the commentary.

The Buddha’s teaching around attachment and grasping takes this even further.

Perhaps it isn’t only that we judge things.

We continually want them to be different.

We want more of what we like.

Less of what we don’t.

We want moments to last.

We want uncertainty to become certainty.

We want people to behave differently.

We want ourselves to be different.

And perhaps that constant wanting is another source of disturbance.

Lao Tzu offers a different way of thinking about it through the Taoist idea of wu wei — often translated as non-action, but perhaps better understood as non-forcing.

There is something beautiful in that.

Not doing nothing.

Not giving up.

But not constantly fighting reality either.

And then there is Thich Nhat Hanh:

“There is no way to peace. Peace is the way.”

I keep coming back to that.

Because it suggests that peace isn’t somewhere over there, waiting for us when everything is finally sorted.

It can be in the way we walk.

The way we listen.

The way we wash the dishes.

The way we fold the shirt.

The way we sit in a café with a dog who is waiting for someone to drop a piece of rustico.

Perhaps peace is not a destination.

Perhaps it is something we encounter when we stop rushing past the moment we are already living.

I remain in search of peace

But I think I understand my search a little differently now. I’m not searching for a place where nothing is difficult. I’m not searching for a permanently quiet mind.

I’m not even searching for some state of perpetual serenity.

I’m interested in understanding the moments when peace is already present — and what I do that makes me fail to notice it.

This morning gave me a rather good lesson.

Peace was sitting there with me.

It was in the coffee.

It was in the orange juice.

It was in Maui.

It was in the little blonde girl.

It was in the woman announcing that she was getting married.

It was even in the Australians.

And then my mind arrived and started writing the screenplay.

Maybe that is what I am beginning to understand.

Peace doesn’t necessarily require us to stop the world.

Perhaps it asks us to stop adding quite so much to it.

So, tomorrow morning, when I am sitting somewhere with my coffee, or folding my shirt, or washing the dishes, I might ask myself:

What is peaceful in this moment?

Where is my mind?

What am I judging?

What am I trying to get past?

Can I be at peace without needing everything to be peaceful?

I don’t expect these questions to make me peaceful.

That would rather defeat the point.

Perhaps they might simply help me notice that, every now and then, peace was there all along.