On the edge of the hills, where few travellers wandered and fewer people called a home, there lived a woman. The woman liked the stillness of her home because, for some reason, being alone made her feel less lonely. During the summers, tourists would arrive with their demands and their questions. It distracted her peace and she longed for the long dark nights of autumn when the days became cooler and the trees became bare.
The woman had work that she desperately wanted to do. She really believed that she could create beautiful work if there were fewer distractions and the tasks of daily life did not get in her way.
Near her home there was a walled garden. She was not sure who owned the garden, or why it was there, but every day she would walk past it and feel a sense of longing. She reasoned that if she could shut herself away in that garden for a couple of days that she would get more work done than in a week of her normal daily routine.
She began to resent the noise and distractions of life even more than before. She knew that she was lucky to live in such a remote, peaceful place and even luckier to be able to experience the quieter seasons. Somehow, though, it still was not quiet enough for her.
Every interruption started to annoy her. She began to think that people were doing it on purpose and that somehow the world was conspiring to prevent her from getting things done.
She felt certain that solitude and peace was the missing ingredient from her life.
Then something happened. One summer was particularly quiet.
There was a big event on in a neighbouring county and all the tourists went there instead. The handful of villagers who lived nearby also went to visit.
The village was empty and the door to the walled garden had been left open.
“At last,” she whispered. There were no tourists to ask directions, and no neighbours to pay unexpected visits. There was no-one to distract her and she could afford to skip her daily jobs because no-one would see the untidiness of her house for a few weeks.
So she carried her books and her papers down to the walled garden and sat down on a bench. She spread out her work tools and sharpened her pencil.
But then she noticed that the bench was covered in soil. She didn’t want her books to be ruined so she went back to the house to find a cloth to clean the bench.
When she had done that she noticed that the plum tree had dropped some plums on the ground near to her. She’d better pick them up, she thought, as she didn’t want them to attract wasps. Once she had gathered them she decided to take them back to the house. It seemed a pity for them to go to waste and she loved to eat a fruit crumble on a Sunday, she thought.
Once she got back to the house she realised that these thoughts of fruit crumble had made her hungry so she stopped and made herself a sandwich and ate it.
After that she felt a bit sleepy as the heat of the sun was quite draining. She decided to have a quick afternoon nap. She would often take a quick nap and would usually be woken
by the noise of the bell from the village church, but the bellringer had gone to the event in the neighbouring village so she slept on for an hour and a half.
She awoke late afternoon with a gasp. The day was slipping away and she had not done any work yet. She raced back to the walled garden where her books and papers were still waiting.
But as she tried to work she started feeling annoyed at herself for the time she had wasted. Her creativity was drowned out by the noise of her chastising herself in her head.
She returned to the house that night having completed no work.
Suddenly a realisation dawned on her.
The noise, distractions and demands had made her work harder. They had given her a deadline, a structure and a purpose.
She realised that she had turned peace and solitude into an imagined paradise where she would suddenly become creative and productive.
It dawned on her that she had been longing for opportunity when actually she needed commitment.
The walled garden could give her silence but it could not give her motivation.
The absent tourists provided more time but that did not fuel creativity.
Ignoring her daily chores meant that she had less to do but it didn’t mean that she would use that time meaningfully.
She realised that the problem had been her all along.