Stillness and comfort over hurried movements…
In the hustle and bustle of urban life, stillness is peculiar. A beggar crouching on the pavement, a commuter asleep on a train, a couple sitting on a bench in a park: they are – involuntarily, exhaustedly, happily – taking ‘time out’.
To practice stillness, people often set themselves apart spatially, making others eddy around them, especially in busy city streets. Stillness is the (often unwelcome) flipside of movement, enforced at traffic lights, in queues, and at bus-stops.
The idea behind stillness and going nowhere — choosing to sit still long enough to turn inward — is at heart a simple one. If your car is broken, you don’t try to find ways to repaint it’s chassis; most of our problems—and therefore our solutions, our peace of mind — lie within.
To hurry around trying to find happiness outside ourselves makes about as much sense as the comical figure in the Islamic parable who, having lost a key in his living room, goes out into the street to look for it because there’s more light there.
So, just in case you’re out there busting a few too many moves in a hurry, and your lower brain is hustling you for more — maybe, just be still.
Even if it’s just for one full breath.
Choosing stillness and comfort over hurried movements is a simple way to afford a transposition of consciousness ‘from relation-in-the-world towards a relation-to-the-world’. The point of gathering stillness is not to enrich the sanctuary or mountaintop but to bring that calm into the motion and commotion of the world.
It’s easy to feel as if we’re standing two inches away from a huge canvas that’s noisy and crowded and changing with every microsecond. It’s only by stepping farther back and standing still that we can begin to see what that canvas (which is our life) really means, and to take in the larger picture.
The best way to change our lives is to change the way we look at it. It’s the perspective we choose— not the places we visit— that ultimately tells us where we stand.
The idea of slowing down our thinking holds true for most of our creative endeavors. This quietness, stillness, and having space to think, differently and imaginatively, are crucial to our process.
This might be the same for you, depending on your inner attitude to life and the world around you. Doing nothing but being still might just be what you need to create an opportunity, and find that solution to the problems you might be facing. For us, moments spent in stillness directly support us in making better moves, and better decisions in every area of our lives. We’re more resourceful, better mediators and coaches, more grounded, and more generous friends, parents, and co-workers.
So, pause, readjust, and then - choose or decide where to go next.
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