Consider Stillness
by Randy Mitchell, WVC Career Center Coordinator
"One’s action ought to come out of an achieved stillness: not to be mere rushing on."
D.H. Lawrence
"Within you there is a stillness and a sanctuary to which you can retreat at any time and be yourself."
Hermann Hesse
When someone asks how I am doing, I often catch myself saying “busy” as if that is a badge of honor. When I am in line at the grocery store, I often find myself looking at my watch, feeling impatient and thinking about where I need to rush off to next. Why? Why are we so overscheduled? Why do we try to pack so much into one day? Are we after quality or quantity?
I believe as a nation we are stillness deprived. It appears that our culture prefers a frenetic pace: weeks filled with activity after activity, appointment after appointment, meeting after meeting. At home, rooms filled with the sound of the TV and the stereo, At work, days filled with eating lunch at our desks as we catch up on e-mail where multitasking is valued and volume often marks the bottom line. And what about our children? What will their world sound like? The other day I was at the ice cream shop and a young girl was texting one friend while she was ordering her ice cream and standing next to another friend. Now that is a quality human interaction!
But what if we were to turn it around?
What if we choose not to rush? What if we choose to slow things down so that we can be fully present? Let us “schedule” time to be still, to sit in silence, turn off the endless chatter in our mind and just be. What if we take time to take in the beautiful apple blossoms and the majestic hills that surround this lovely valley? What would happen then? Might we be more patient, more creative, more energized? Let’s try it and see!
Genece Hamby in “A Sanctuary of Stillness” invites us to consider that “silence is golden; a refuge from the mentally deadening noise of a current culture that is increasing and pushing many people further away from the sanctuary of stillness….Stillness acts as a gateway to the essence of who we are.”
Stillness allows us time to recharge, reconnect and refocus. Let’s make room for it today!