Yesterday, I was out the door by 7:00 to pick up my grandson. He’s crawling now and is a little perpetual-motion machine. P.S. The little guy refuses to nap. I dropped him off in the late afternoon and rushed to the middle school to see my granddaughter’s basketball game (her team won). I got home and checked my schedule for today. It’s jam-packed and yet I wondered if I could squeeze a pedicure in between seeing a client and going to volunteer at the elementary school.
Screeeeech! Time to put the brakes on. What about the meditation practice I wanted to pick up again? Where can I fit that in?
My word for 2024 is presence; my resolution is to be more present in my life. I’ve been trying. When I walk our dog, Betty, I try to listen to and identify the birds calling. I try to remember to feel the air on my skin (what little of it is exposed in February). I remind myself to notice the hoarfrost on the trees, the animal tracks on the path instead of writing a blog post in my head. When I’m at Gianna’s basketball game, I watch rather than make a grocery list.
But I have got to stop running around so much I fall into bed exhausted. I need to embrace both stillness and silence.
One way to embrace stillness and silence is to wake up before the rest of the world. Rather than moving into activity, stay still. Leave the lights off. Don’t pick up your phone or turn on music or the TV. Be still and simply listen.
We think of silence as the absence of sound, but silence has its own weight and quality. Listen. What do you hear? Your heartbeat? The furnace or fan? Traffic?
Stay in silence for as long as you can. Can you give it three minutes? Can you remain silent until you feel it move into your core? Can you feel its gentle pulsing? Can you allow it to cleanse you? If you can remain silent for five minutes, you’ll feel vibrant and connected to the Universe.
You may prefer to do this at night if you’re the last one up. Or take five minutes out of your day to experience stillness and silence.
Silence is always there — vast, potent, and available for us to step into any time we choose. Give it a try this week. Let me know what it felt like for you.