In early 2023, I was "gifted" a week-long retreat, courtesy of COVID, at the very beginning of the year. Since my family (miraculously) did not have it, I quarantined myself in my room for a week. It had me in a weird place: I was too ill and fuzzy-minded to think clearly, which meant work was out of the question or I'd make a mess of things. But I was not ill enough to sleep all day.
The worst of the symptoms passed after a day, and I happily enjoyed a good solid binge of all the shows I wanted to watch (the second season of White Lotus, Emily in Paris—don't judge). But once the unfettered indulgence of binge-watching shows wore off, I started to spend large chunks of time in stillness.
Multiple times, I put down my book in the middle of a passage and just looked out the window. I stopped cleaning the closet to close my eyes and simply sit there. As the days wore on, I gave into the urge to be still more and more.
It had been a long time since I had been still. The month of December was hectic, sure, but when I reflected on the last four months, I could honestly say that I had not gotten this much rest and stillness in a very long time.
It's very hard to be still. Our lives are not set up for it. It's inconvenient to the system that we all live in. If we are not consuming, we must produce. One might even say real stillness is the anecdote to this system, so we can't have that, can we?
But it's not just external resistance we hit. There are lots of reasons I haven't wanted to be still in the last few months. Maybe even the last few years. I was avoiding stillness so I could avoid pain.
Because when I get still, I discover deep wells of grief. Frustration. Creative boredom. Lack of alignment and fulfillment. None of which I want—or know how—to "deal with."
It's so much more convenient to keep plowing forward with the plans I've made—the plans that give me a semblance of security and certainty—than to sit and be in tune with those deep wells of emotion.
But listen I did, looking for the lesson in each of them.
I sat still. I listened, I felt, and then I wrote. We forget that writing can be a way to move emotion and to dive deeper into our own experience. I didn't write for perfection, for beauty, for clear communication, or for anyone else's eyes. Writing has been catharsis for me for a very long time, and it was no different here. I used my writing as a tool for inner dialogue. It wasn't pretty. It was messy and sloppy and, if someone else read my notebook, they would think it belonged to a crazy woman. It really didn't matter... the writing served only as a tool to go deeper.
As I tapped in, I realized that it's not that I don't know how to deal with these experiences, it's that doing so is colossally hard work.
I don't like what it takes to deal with them, because it means a lot of change and uncertainty.
Furthermore, I'd been telling myself "I don't know" what to do about some of these situations, when deep down I did. It was just that the action I knew I needed to take was unpalatable. Difficult. Something I'd rather avoid.
It was not an easy week. A lot of tears were shed, but it felt good to shed them. The time away gave me the chance to come into congruence with what was really true for me.
Stillness can be hard. But what you find in stillness is vital. If you find yourself habitually avoiding stillness, you may want to ask yourself why. Sit down in a quiet room, with no distractions, and write to yourself about why you avoid stillness. You might surprise yourself when you see what arises.