2024-07-21

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Tranquility.

Synonym: Serenity.

Calmness, quietness. Peacefulness.

I think most people don't value this feeling enough.

Unlike joy or excitement, I find tranquility to be a feeling which someone can choose to feel.

Tranquility allows us to feel content with our existence, irrespective of what we've done or who we are. You can feel tranquil even when not everything is going according to plan. You can have done nothing all day, and yet feel happy through tranquility.

I find that in any scenario, I can feel tranquil if I wish to. I can simply let myself go, and notice the noise in my surroundings. The air conditioner. The passing traffic. The things I normally filter out.

I bask in the surrounding noises and sensations that exist around me, to turn myself transparent. Gone are the worries in my head, the memories of the past. I forget myself, only aware of what else remains around me. And in that nothingness, I feel the beauty of the world, the beauty of the ever-changing, but indifferent, presence of the Other. And through the beauty of all else that is not me, I feel a sense of contentment. The world is tranquil, and so, so fundamentally indifferent to me. Regardless of what happens to me, I can feel at peace with my surroundings, knowing that everything will go on regardless of whether I exist.

I feel tranquility.

...

If joy is a rush of dopamine, tranquility is a long-lasting drug, not as noticeable but just as potent over time. In a world where short bursts of emotion are ever-increasingly the norm, these drip-fed emotions, like tranquility or lament, I feel, are left behind, forgotten in a sense. Gone are the two-week novels that took you through a rollercoaster of emotions; TikTok hopecore compilations now take you through the same rollercoaster in 60 seconds. (Replacing grief with an illusion of pure sadness, tranquility with an illusion of pure joy, and abbreviating the emotions we're meant to feel.)

While this summarization of emotion allows us the illusion of feeling, I believe the nuance of a lot of that feeling is lost in the process. One-minute sob stories that only give us 15 seconds to feel grief, and 10 seconds at the end to feel hope? Short-form media simply fails to capture the same depth of emotion as reality, novels, or films.

And this is so important, because, despite living in a fast-paced world, slow, complex emotions are what keeps us human, what allows us to deeply observe ourselves and our surroundings. The constant schedules and deadlines we have in our lives encourage and force us to shorten our cycles of emotion. We don't have to constantly be achieving things, constantly striving to be better; a laid-back, slow approach will help us take life slowly, to appreciate every moment richer and fuller.

You can sit down in tranquility, really think it through, give yourself a chance for self-reflection and introspection. And out of it, you don't just come out feeling contentment; you have, in my view, a better understanding of who you are. Joy is addictive; you can't ever have enough. But tranquility doesn't have that same addictive nature, it stays until you feel enough of it.