Finding Peace

When we are unable to find tranquility within ourselves, it is useless to seek it elsewhere.
 – Franҫois de La Rochefoucauld

Jet lag was catching up with me and I rubbed my dry eyes. My flight to London from Seattle arrived a few hours before and I was trying to stay awake by wandering the Egyptian Gallery of the British Museum. I was only here for a few days for a scientific meeting, and I had to adjust quickly to the time change.

The museum treasures were vast. One could wander for hours through a maze of thousands of artifacts and archeological finds from major civilizations on nearly every continent touched by the British Empire. The crowds were thick around the Rosetta Stone, and I backed away looking farther down the gallery for something else to admire.

That’s when I saw something that took my breath away. A colossal statue of an Egyptian pharaoh mounted high above the public. I stared upward with my jaw agape.

The face had a youthful, boyish, almost innocent appearance. The eyes were almond-shaped, and his gaze met mine. The facial features were idealized with a chiseled nose and chest, full lips, and perfectly shaped eyes. But it was the expression that was unforgettable; somehow divine, all-knowing, mysterious, and serene. All at the same time.

What was his secret? I wondered as I walked around the statue. That peaceful face didn’t worry about the health of his spouse. In fact, he never worried at all. He never fell apart when he was alone with his thoughts. Or thought that life had dealt him unfair cards. He was an Egyptian King, forever youthful, mysterious, and divine.

I struggled to break from his gaze and didn’t know why. Maybe it was brain fog from the jetlag. Or maybe I wanted to know his secret. Now, the crowd and their tour guide were moving en masse from the Rosetta Stone to the base of this giant statue.

“The statue of Ramesses II was made from a single piece of granite about 3,000 years ago,” a tour guide standing near me explained to his group. “It is massive and weighs more than 80 tons. Originally, a cobra adorned his forehead, which was a symbol of royalty, but this was lost over the years.” Murmured expressions of admiration came from the group as people snapped pictures with their cell phones.

I let the crowd filter around me as I stayed firmly planted on my spot. I wasn’t finished trying to figure out his expression and what it might teach me. How could I capture that kind of peace? Was he so content because he knew that he would be guided into the afterlife? Yes, that young, beautiful face appeared truly immortal.

My husband didn’t want to live forever. He was happy to be the best parent to our daughters, husband to me, and to live his best life for any time remaining. If the cancer came roaring back, he would accept that it had done so, and follow doctors’ orders to salvage the remaining time. Whatever his prognosis, he would take it with grace. And leave us with the biggest hole that I and my girls would feel every day of our lives. I couldn’t shake this dread. It wasn’t fair.

“I am not going to worry about what I can’t control,” he would tell me when I brought up my worries. He had found his peace, so I tried not to bother him with the garbage that was littering my thoughts.

Taking a few steps back, I wanted to understand why the statue held power over me. There was something so perfect and divine in those rounded and chiseled features. But the more I gazed into those serene eyes, the more I felt the black hole in my chest. A festering black hole that began the day my husband told me he had cancer.

I looked back up at the boyish Egyptian pharaoh with his mysteriously peaceful expression and savored the feeling. It dawned on me how much I craved an internal peace. My mind had been cluttered with cancer endgame scenarios for longer than I cared to admit. To make matters worse, my imagination would layer in visuals and details on those scenarios drawn from decades as a physician.

To stay in this moment of serenity with the Egyptian pharaoh would be heaven. I wanted to savor the feeling for as long as I could and remember what it was like to have an internal peace. But first, I needed to sweep the cobwebs out of my head and tuck them away into a tiny box in the corner of my mind.