Transformative Stillness
If you don’t read Maria Popova over at Brain Pickings, you should.
She may be the most well-read person on the Internet.
Brain Pickings is a daily flood of literary goodness.
Everything is timely. Often there is an important and highly relevant piece like this one.
We are in strange times. The greatest complaint I hear is the requirement to stop moving. To be still.
That’s not just tough for our culture. It’s torturous. Pascal said that “all of humanity’s problems stem from man”s inability to sit in a room alone.”
And that was in the 17th century.
This time, this global moment, is more than just waiting for “everything to turn around” and “get back to normal.”
This is a moment of global stillness. Learn to live with the stillness.
And be changed by it.
“The great gift of such periods is that they invite us to question our certitudes, our givens, these seemingly sure foundations that have lulled us into complacency — for it is only by being jolted out of our complacencies, cultural or personal, that we ever reach beyond the horizon, toward new territories of truth, beauty, and flourishing.”
