As I’m growing up, I start to realize the importance of stillness. Not the romanticized, poetic kind, but the mundane, the weirdly uncomfortable one. Days slip through you, and just when you start to get comfortable in the monotony of ”nothing shifting”, you start to question your past. A past that once felt unbearable, but alive.
So I think to myself. ”If nothing is hurting, and nothing is healing, then what exactly am i doing here?”
To start with, I firmly believe that people who are used to living in intensity and movement, are the ones who interpret stillness as a form of punishment. And just like that, life delivers the one thing they were not prepared to face – feeling ”limited”. It’s as if every restless time they once lived, has transformed into a big pile of nothing. And every silence they wished they had avoided, is now louder than anything they had known.
In this constant self battle with oneself, there is one sweet escape, known and spoken of by many – falling in love. The rebooting and lively love that sweeps suddenly like a fresh breeze. It’s what inspires billions of women to daily put themselves out there, whether that’s going on another first date or calling ”fate” a minor flirty interaction, giving lots of seconds chances or even walking the long way home just to pass by that one place. But then again, billions of men , are out there too, shooting their shot, exchanging looks or simply showing up in the right place at the right time. Indeed, it does demand courage and patience, but how odd could that be when love itself knows no timing? Some yearn for it, some wait for it, some pretend they don’t care and some even believe love has passed them by. But all of them, whether they admit it or not, make space for love to come along, to pull them out of their stillness, because love after-all, is the greatest movement of all.
Love is to be desired, love is to be craved. Yet often, in the impatience of waiting, we overlook the quiet value of stillness. Perhaps it’s in the pause that we find a chance to heal individually. We rip so much of ourselves, to seek for a new lover as a refuge, hoping a new person will fix what feels unfinished. But love is not meant to be a hiding space, a ”sweet escape” and most definitely it is not the other person’s task to mend your wounds. So maybe love can only come correct, when you have made peace with your own stillness. When you no longer beg for it to save you, but welcome it as a companion, not a cure.
So if you don’t know what you’re doing here, maybe it’s because you’re not doing anymore, you’re simply being, and that’s what makes it unfamiliar.
You’re allowed to just be
Dani