Back again, equanimously

Catching the last bit of sun on the porch in front of my new home, I am slowly arriving in Amman. I physically arrive two days ago, but didn't have time since then to actually arrive - a major shopping spree to furbish and equip our flat (everything from a fridge to a fork, and from curtains to couch chairs) took most of the first day, meeting the new students, our successors and arranging things for my upcoming master thesis research (the official reason for my return to Amman) as well as meeting old friends took all of yesterday. So this morning I woke up gently on my apparently not so uncomfortable bed construction: a camping mattress (hardly the breadth of my body and barely the thickness of a finger) on top of the skeleton of a double bed - a wooden rack. That, too, will pass of course, as progress is made in the "new home" mission. So far the mission has been (mostly prior to my arrival, via remote sensing more or less), to fill the room I now call mine with good vibes and a constructive energy, to help me with the upcoming months of master thesis research. My topic is cropping patterns in the Jordan Valley's agriculture - how the government here is regulating or controlling the planting of crops with low water productivity in the Jordan Valley, meaning crops that use disproportionally large amounts of water cultivate per ton (or dollar) of harvested produce.
I notice that I have hardly written about my studies in this space, which is partly because most of my in-front-of-screen time focusses just on that, so I am more inclined to write on other issues here. But lately I realised there's another reason for this: During an extensive period of concentration over several days on nothing but the different sensations of my mind and body, I noticed that of all the many thoughts, memories, fantasies and other distractions that diverted my attention from those sensations, close to nothing was related to my studies - at least nothing that came up naturally, instinctively from inside - only sometimes I thought consciously of what lies ahead of me now, academically. This then made me wonder why my studies aren't on my subconscious mind - which is where one assumes "the things that really matter to you" would be chasing each other like mad. So do my studies not really matter to me? Or is it just the realisation that the field of water management - however noble, respectable and oh so necessary an idea it is perceived as by everybody who hears about it - will never be more than just an occupation for me during work-hours, rather than a passionate project I want to give my life to? And if so - is that such a bad thing?

Then the question looms, of course: what is my passion? I recently learned that passion is nothing desirable and that the art of life apparently lies in equanimity, which is a concept hard to fully implement by a normal mortal being (let alone fully grasp), though intellectually it makes perfect sense. Well, to me at least. But let me explain: Our mind reacts to anything that comes to it from our senses with either craving or aversion; both eventually lead to misery, because something unplanned and undesired will happen, or something planned and desired will not happen - this is the case every day of our life. We get attached to things, people, situations, concepts or places that we adore, desire or love. Or basically: we get attached to and crave for the feelings/sensations inside ourselves that are a result of these outside things/stimuli. This attachment makes our well-being dependent on the satisfaction of the craving for these sensations. A disappointment then might leads us to react negatively to something else that will arise and so one comes to the next and creates misery.
If we are perfectly equanimous to whatever happens (which doesn't mean being passive or resigned to fate), we will never be disappointed or sad and we can thus slowly decrease our own misery, by realising that actually all reasons for our own negativity are a result of our reacting either with craving or aversion to any given incoming stimulus. We alone - never any outside source - are in fact the reason for our misery, because we always choose to react. If we break this cycle and with an equanimous mind stop reacing, we - or rather our well-being - will then become independent of these stimuli and we can focus our entire attention on developing the love for all creation, real harmony, peace and compassion within ourselves and then to let it ooze out to everything around us - assuming that is our goal, of course. (-:
See? It's convincing intellectually - but now try being equanimous for a day... haha!!

The call to friday evening prayers and the very annoying melody of the gas van, who must've passed a dozen times today (no trace of aversion here) bring me back to the porch, where in the meantime the sun has climbed around the back of a building opposite our new house, touching my cheek again with warmer, more tender and golden rays, soon to disappear into the waving branches of a palm-tree at the end of road.

It's lovely to be back.

I say that, of course, without a trace of craving or attachment to this sensation.