Serenity — A Vocabulary Story
Five Minutes of Peace
Yannis's dad had a chair by the window that he called the Serenity Chair.
Serenity means the state of being calm, peaceful, and untroubled.
"Every evening," he explained, "I am going to sit in this chair for five minutes of complete serenity. No phone, no telly, no questions about where the scissors are."
"What if the cat needs you?" asked Yannis.
"Then you may interrupt."
The first evening, Dad sat down, closed his eyes and breathed in slowly through his nose. Yannis watched from the doorway with a stopwatch. At forty seconds, the cat climbed onto Dad's head. At one minute, Yannis's sister Eleni started her recorder practice in the next room, which sounded like a kettle in distress. At two minutes, the doorbell rang and it was a man asking whether they had considered a new driveway.
"That was not serenity," said Dad, opening one eye. "That was the opposite."
The second evening, he tried the bathroom. The third evening, he tried the car. On the fourth evening he came home to find Yannis sitting in the chair with the cat, the stopwatch and a sign propped on his knees that said DO NOT DISTURB, EXPERIMENT IN PROGRESS.
"How's it going?" whispered Dad.
"Four minutes," whispered Yannis. "Nobody's rung the bell, Eleni's gone out, and the cat's asleep. I think the secret is to look like you're not trying."
Dad sat on the floor beside the chair, very quietly, and the two of them stayed like that until the stopwatch beeped.
"Five minutes," said Yannis. "Serenity achieved."
"Don't tell your sister," said Dad. "She'll want a go."
Word Definition
serenity
meaning
the state of being calm, peaceful, and untroubled
synonyms
composure · tranquillity · stillness · placidity · quietude
antonyms
agitation · bustle · anguish
example sentence
The serenity of the mountain lake took her breath away.