Recently, I’ve heard from a number of people with whom I philosophize that they feel a real hunger for newness. Maybe it is that quaint village they remember and wish to return to or that mountain they want to hike up or the aqua sea they long to dip their toes into.

That hunger for newness springs from a sense of dullness, of sameness, of never-endingness. One spoke of being in a mode of dormancy. Others simply call it “boredom.”

Whatever they–or you–call it, it is not the way, is it? To make happiness contingent upon circumstances or the fulfillment of desires–is this not the folly about which plenty of wisdom traditions amply speak?

I tell you there is contentment right under your feet! This contentment stays put. In fact, it goes wherever you goes and dwells wherever you dwell. It gets up in the morning with you and goes to sleep when you do. Its intimacy is not owing to its special kinship with you; its intimacy is owing to its actually being you.

OK, fine. Need a stepladder to come to this non-dual realization? Take one from the keen observers of nature’s peculiarities. There is so much to observe and to love in but a few square feet, isn’t there? Isn’t this what the nature poets keep telling us?

The sound of the creaking door. The footfall on an old floorboard. The road runner balling up on an old tree stump in the midst of the falling snow. The mourning doves bundling up in the back yard as the wind whips and whirs.

What more could you ask for?

A pandemic is just the time to unlearn everything you presumed to know and then to see what’s always been right here in the very heart of being.