Stillness

One of my favorite moments of the day has been when I get home from work and I walk to the mailbox. The sun has either started to go down or has, and the neighborhood is silent. As I walk down the driveway it is in those moments that I breathe in life. For some strange reason this breathe has been the most calm of my day.


A Harvard University study says that even 10 minutes of silence can increase happiness in your life. I believe that my 20 second walk full of cold air, calm surroundings, and brisk invigoration does this for me.

Today I woke up to this:

I’m not one that gets excited at snow but I find that the stillness that a snowfall like this brings is soothing. The pure perfection of the contours can only encourage a belief in God. Ironically it is the exact same feeling I felt last Saturday when it was 70 degrees and I laid on a blanket, looked up and watched the leaves blow and the sun shine on my face. I thought “man, if you could just bottle up this feeling, there is no way anyone would ever feel sad again with a spritz of this”.

I’ve always genuinely had a pretty sunny disposition, despite my ability to examine my dark and twisty feelings with great detail. The more alone I feel the better I am at examining that side of me and afterwards I always seem to develop a newfound strength. Perhaps this is where the disposition stems from. The past few months I’ve been on a research frenzy of how to move on in life. Move on from what I’m not entirely sure because I’ve come to find out that no matter how you move in life there will be some wounds that take their own time to heal, there will always be decisions that cause you to stumble and may push you on a different road, and there will be people that come into your life and cause you to reexamine everything you ever knew about yourself.

I’m analytical by nature and I tend to look at myself as my own little research project probing my brain with different thesis’ and theories until one pans out. I’m a work in progress. I think we all are and because my brain is usually on overdrive, I welcome those moments of stillness. The ability to have those moments in times of heartbreak, struggle, loneliness, and fear is what makes a person survive. It’s what keeps life worth living.

“In the midst of movement and chaos, keep stillness inside of you.” Deepak Chopra