The Art of Stillness

Stillness. Peace. Tranquility.

I long for these. I imagine life to be so much richer, more enjoyable and fulfilling with these three virtues in your life. What scares me, though, is the idea that it may never happen to me.

All my life, I've been told my brain flits around subjects at a mile a moment. It's been a constant source of tension- things that seem perfectly understandable to me can be incredibly hard for others to follow. I'm always in some kind of motion, always doing something. More often than not it takes at least an hour for me to fall asleep: it takes that long for my mind to stop rushing from idea to idea, and settle enough for me to sleep. It's exhausting.

I've tried to meditate, but I've yet to manage more than a few seconds of quiet. I feel as though the more I try, the more my mind rebels. Thing is, I'm tired of flitting. I'd love to be able to just put my focus on one thing at a time; to start something, finish it, and then move on to something else. At this point in my life, I think I'm seeing life stillness as the ability to devote myself to one thing at a time, wholeheartedly. Stillness is slowing down the constant frantic motion of my life, lowering the stress and calming everything down so that life flows more smoothly for myself and those around me. It's removing from my life the things that don't work but I feel duty bound to keep. It's choosing where my energy goes, and learning to stop giving my power away to non-deserving causes. It's setting clear boundaries, and sticking to them. It's guarding my time so I don't have to try to catch up later on.

Stillness, it seems, is a commitment to live my life in a way that makes serenity possible, rather than inadvertently making it unlikely or downright impossible.

It's a tall order, though, so perhaps I'll start off small.

  1. Continue to start each day with a cup of tea and no distractions.
  2. When I remember something I have to do, write it down and go back to what I was doing.
  3. Start new things only when I've finished what I've already been working on.
  4. Stop trying to meditate. Try and create quiet moment every day and enjoy them, rather than trying to force your mind to still.

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1 comments:

Grammy said...

I was like you. When I read a Google preview on the book the untethered soul. I woke up the the fact. Your soul can take control and tell it to shut up. Once you learn to take control rather that live on auto pilot. Things get easier. You then get above it all and look at life differently.

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