I’m in my final few weeks of a job that, frnakly, very rarely involves actually doing anything. I get a lot of chances to both think about this and engage in it.
I think people, for the most part, would be a bit happier if they got more stillness into their lives. I’ve got affection for the Zen practice of zazen (“just sitting”), but I think it may be counter-productive that stillness there can get buried in religious and philosophical jargon.
When I was ten, eleven, twelve (my age isn’t pinned down firmly in the memory), one winter arriving home from school I was walking back to the door from the bus, and paused as I had been doing to spend some time admiring the birds about the feeder. (It was a period of my life where school days were making me extremely envious of their ability to just fly away.) Not really formulating any kind of plan, I set down my bookbag and walked to the feeder–of course the birds scattered up into various perches on the trees and roof overlooking. I gathered seed into my gloved hand, rested my hand on the sill of the feeder, arm outstretched, and stood. Still.
I don’t know how long. A few minutes. Little Drastic the statue. I feel comfortable, post-facto, thinking in some Zen jargon about the state of my mind during it. The birds recovered from initial scatter-instinct, and started coming back down, getting scattered seed from the ground at first a wary distance from the human standing there. Flutter down, peck at snow, flutter back up to the branches of the oak overhanging.
Stillness. Birds began landing on the sill of the feeder. Calm; hope, but not desire. Then the first swallow lighted on my thumb, perched there, and ate from my palm. Others followed.
After some time, I dropped the remaining seed, and moved away, as I was getting rather cold, wind was picking up. My parents had been watching from the dining room window, both looking amazed. They’d snapped pictures of it, seeming to think it was something unbelievable. At the time, I literally didn’t understand why it was so big a deal. Of course the birds did that, I made myself into a presence that embodied no threat.
Stillness is a good thing.