Still
Still my heart. Still water. Still I rise.
Stillness is a gift and a challenge. Everything moves faster than it did 10 years ago, and way faster than it did in my childhood. They say that our perspective of time speeds up the older we get, and also the world is way different than it was when I was born in the 80s. I’m not generation X, and I’m a little too old to be considered a millennial. I’m an “elder millennial” like Iliza Shlesinger talked about in her Netflix comedy special of the same name. The world literally transformed from analog to digital before my eyes, and I came of age with the internet. I didn’t have an email address in high school, but immediately after high school I got one, because a young woman I was hanging out with told me I needed to get one, and showed me how.
As we know, technology has made a lot of our work easier to generate, but the expectations of speed and productivity have gone way up. We are expected to do many things at once, while responding to emails and texts promptly. We are almost always plugged in, and we are uncomfortable in silence and stillness. A body that stays in motion, stays in motion, but a mind that is always running wears out.
We are told to achieve, achieve, achieve, and achieve more. As we tackle goals, even as we are in the process of completing them our minds are ahead several steps. I’m not saying this is all bad, but rather, sometimes the way to go forward is to be still, and be present. Reflect, listen, and then proceed. The answers usually come when we have a second to listen.
I’m feeling the “dip” right now, another thing I learned about from Seth Godin, if you haven’t checked him out, check out his podcast, Akimbo, I’ve found great value there. The dip is what happens after the initial excitement from the momentum of launching a new project wears off. It happens on the turn of a dime, or the drop of a hat, in writing I guess it would be the drop of a pencil. Still. Be. Present. Here. Now. Listen.
I’m working on building a morning routine. I started this morning with writing this, I think I need to do some exercises before I start writing, because the resistance was strong this morning, and I did not successfully write anything substantive this morning. But I refuse to be beaten by resistance, so I am writing this now, in the early evening. I just got home from another great day at Black Arts Institute. I think a lot of us students there are collectively feeling a dip this week, we are nearing the end of this journey, so feelings are running deep, and we are feeling chapters closing.
I’m going to an event, a screening for a web series with my wife tonight, and as I’m an actor and want to work more on stage and screen, it’s important that I show up to as many things as I can, otherwise I would very much love a night in. I am working this week on not multi-tasking all the time, doing one thing at a time. This is not easy for me, but I think it’s a great exercise in focus, patience and discipline. Also realizing that I don’t always have to speak, I can practice silence. I find that when I practice silence and stillness, when I do speak, I actually have something to say. I got the idea to not multi-task as much today from a planner I bought during Jen Waldman’s Shift class this past January. This planner is called a Passion Planner, which I highly recommend as a great resource if you want to organize your time better, and set clear goals and plans for yourself.
We got to open our day today doing a Feldenkrais workshop which is probably where I got the idea to write about stillness. I can’t articulate all that Feldenkrais is right now, but I plan on having Magaly Colimon-Christopher on a future podcast episode, so I will write more in depth about that in the future as I learn more. For now, I invite you to take a moment to be still, breathe, connect with the earth and your body, and take a moment of silence for yourself. And when you’re ready, speak out loud or write down three things that you are grateful for, and three things that you would like to wish for in the next 3 days.
Peace.
