This weekend was busy and long and sleep depriving. But wonderful. In the midst of crazy life, I got to capture some quiet moments all to myself.
Stillness is important. When you rush around as if the whole world depends on you, you breed stress. And stress breeds discontent.
And rushing, and stress, and discontent all kill creativity. So be still. Realize that the world will move on if you sit for a moment.
I rediscovered this while watching a meteor shower in the middle of the night. Huddled in blankets, laying on the ground at 3 am. All alone. I didn’t mind the quiet, the solitude. The birds were all in their nests. A few crickets added their serenade to the silence. I had to keep still to spot the streaks of light flitting past, and the stillness was peaceful. As stress grew less, my creativity seemed to blossom. I had space to think. When I came inside at 4:45, I couldn’t help but write for a few minutes.
I rediscovered this yesterday at my neighbor’s house, where I was house-sitting. After playing with their dogs for a while, I collapsed on a grassy slope, exhausted from my middle-of-the-night star-gazing the night before. I lay down on the grass and caught my breath. The sky was blue as forget-me-nots. And the orange, red, and yellows of the trees were waving their flags of autumn in the wind. I just laid there, with the dogs wrestling at my feet and the craziness all around me. And I was still.
It was only after the quiet, only after letting go of the worry of not getting anything done, that I felt like writing.
We need quiet. We need time and space to think, to let go of the worry, to let our minds wander.
A stressed mind is worried about productivity, and to-do lists, and what-if’s. A distracted mind is not creative.
The world doesn’t rest on your shoulders. It will survive without your every-moment effort. Take time to breathe.
Tracing Wonder 