A few years ago, we moved from France to Portugal. After a year or so living a nomadic life in a camper van, we knew we wanted to land somewhere that offered the same sense of freedom, space and nature on our doorstep.
We packed the bags and moved into our current house. It's in a quiet neighbourhood, quite rural, but near a town, nestled amongst the forest, a short walk to the ocean. It sounds idyllic.
On our first evening there, we sat out in the garden, absorbing the size of the move we'd just made with our little family, letting it all land.
That's when I heard it. The distant sound of a constantly noisy, busy main road, not far away.
The night I mistook the ocean for a motorway
I was so angry. I felt stupid, that we hadn't checked this before agreeing to rent the house. We hadn't just moved here and accepted the sacrifices of a more remote living situation, to end up within earshot of cars. The whole reason we live where we do, and accept that getting anywhere involves a car (how ironic), is so that we don't have to hear them, or breathe them, in our own living environment.
I was properly pissed off.
After a few minutes of stomping around, threatening to pack it all up and leave, my partner turned to me, held me by the shoulders, and said, "babe, that's not the sound of a road. It's the sound of the ocean waves."
I instantly felt so silly for getting so worked up about something that didn't even exist. We all had a good laugh about it.
The same sound, two completely different feelings
What was most interesting is how, the moment I learned it was the ocean, the very same sound that had annoyed me so much turned into a sound that was joy inducing. The very same sound.
All that had changed was my perception.
The exact same sound waves, moving through the exact same air. Irritation, or joy, depending entirely on what I brought to the hearing of it.
What this reveals about perception
We do this constantly. Not just with sound.
The same conversation. The same body in the mirror. The same ordinary Tuesday. Read as lack, or read as enough, depending on the state we're in when we meet it.
There's a veil we lay over the world, mostly without ever noticing we've done it, so that what we meet is rarely the thing itself. Nothing had changed on the outside. What changed was the instrument doing the perceiving: me.
Which means the road was never really the problem. And the ocean was never really the fix. It was always, only, what I was bringing to the hearing.
Perception is a practice, not just a mindset
I really think of it this way: perception is a muscle, something that can be noticed, flexed and trained, rather than a fixed lens we're stuck looking through.
That's exactly what I explore in a new practice I've just recorded inside the studio.
If you'd like to come and try it, there's a 7 day free trial to the whole online studio waiting for you.
With love and curiosity,
Pippa x
We packed the bags and moved into our current house. It's in a quiet neighbourhood, quite rural, but near a town, nestled amongst the forest, a short walk to the ocean. It sounds idyllic.
On our first evening there, we sat out in the garden, absorbing the size of the move we'd just made with our little family, letting it all land.
That's when I heard it. The distant sound of a constantly noisy, busy main road, not far away.
The night I mistook the ocean for a motorway
I was so angry. I felt stupid, that we hadn't checked this before agreeing to rent the house. We hadn't just moved here and accepted the sacrifices of a more remote living situation, to end up within earshot of cars. The whole reason we live where we do, and accept that getting anywhere involves a car (how ironic), is so that we don't have to hear them, or breathe them, in our own living environment.
I was properly pissed off.
After a few minutes of stomping around, threatening to pack it all up and leave, my partner turned to me, held me by the shoulders, and said, "babe, that's not the sound of a road. It's the sound of the ocean waves."
I instantly felt so silly for getting so worked up about something that didn't even exist. We all had a good laugh about it.
The same sound, two completely different feelings
What was most interesting is how, the moment I learned it was the ocean, the very same sound that had annoyed me so much turned into a sound that was joy inducing. The very same sound.
All that had changed was my perception.
The exact same sound waves, moving through the exact same air. Irritation, or joy, depending entirely on what I brought to the hearing of it.
What this reveals about perception
We do this constantly. Not just with sound.
The same conversation. The same body in the mirror. The same ordinary Tuesday. Read as lack, or read as enough, depending on the state we're in when we meet it.
There's a veil we lay over the world, mostly without ever noticing we've done it, so that what we meet is rarely the thing itself. Nothing had changed on the outside. What changed was the instrument doing the perceiving: me.
Which means the road was never really the problem. And the ocean was never really the fix. It was always, only, what I was bringing to the hearing.
Perception is a practice, not just a mindset
I really think of it this way: perception is a muscle, something that can be noticed, flexed and trained, rather than a fixed lens we're stuck looking through.
That's exactly what I explore in a new practice I've just recorded inside the studio.
If you'd like to come and try it, there's a 7 day free trial to the whole online studio waiting for you.
With love and curiosity,
Pippa x
