We donāt need to do anything at all. Just allow yourself to be seated; let the sitting take place. If you donāt strive to sit, relaxation will come. And you know something? When there is relaxation, healing begins to take place. There is no healing without relaxation. Relaxation means doing nothing, not trying.
Fellow Philosophers,
If your life is anything like mine, things might be a bit crazy right now.
Itās the end of the year and the close of the 4th Quarter at work. Second Semester at school. Itās gifts and plays and rehearsals. Itās family and friends and celebrations. Itās meals in and meals out, time on the road and time around the table.
And then its moments of punctuated emptinessāChristmas afternoon, time off work, quiet nights and early mornings with no where to go, because for a day much of the world closes.
And sometimes, the unexpected quiet can be even harder than the breakneck pace of the end-of-year race.
Iāve been noticing lately in these moments of quiet a propensity for impatience.
Strangely, itās not impatience toward others, or toward gettingāitās an impatience of self.
It a deep want to take a vacation tomorrow, start a business today, become an angel investor, solve perceived character flaws, be more generous, learn to fly an airplaneā¦.you get the picture.
I want a lifetime of life in this moment. Itās not necessarily a bad thing on the surface, but it is a bit exhausting.
But Iāve been noticing also that in the cultivation of patience there is room for surprise, for boredom, for simplicity, for rest and relaxation.
When there is so much inertia in a life lived quickly, itās hard to stop without the train coming off the rails.
But maybe there is another way.
A friend recently shared a poem with me. He mailed itāa photocopied version from an old typewritten note. He could have emailed it, took a picture on his phone, or sent a link to an article. Instead he sent it via the United States Postal Service. Paid for postage. It took time.
Itās dated January 23, 1975.
Do not be in too much of a hurry to emulate what
You admire. Sometimes it may take a number of years
Before you are ready, but there it is, building
Inside you, a constructing eggā¦
But this letterāalong with a handwritten noteāstopped me in my tracks. I was captivated by its otherworldly pace. Written meticulously on a typewriter, sitting patiently on a shelf, waiting 50 years to be picked up, photocopied, and snail-mailed across town.
āDo not be in too much of a hurry to emulate what you admireā¦ā
This letter brings with it a ceremony of stillnessā15 minutes in the midst of a busy day, alone in the study completely absorbed in wisdom. A wisdom which made a treacherous journey from the hands of a 1975 author to a quiet suburban home in 2021.
So allow me to pay it forward.
I would love to share a photocopied version of a typewritten poem from 1975 so you can have your holiday pause.
Reply to this email with your name and an address if youād like to join me in the action of non-action. A punctuated moment of stillness filled with the potential of tomorrowāand the fullness of the present.
Happy holidays,
Matt
References:
https://www.mindfulnessbell.org/archive/tag/patience
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