Too often we humans don’t recognize those times when we need to be still, need to be reserved.  We rush from moment to moment, thought to thought, feeling to feeling, and so we cram full each day with a menagerie of events that become distorted, dislocated.  Is it any wonder we find life so stressful, too busy and painfully hectic?

This constant sprinting, both literally and figuratively, poisons the water of life that streams beautifully from day to day, and later as we find our way further downstream we discover the toxins we spilled long ago have dashed our hopes against jagged rocks and left us empty, wanting, sans direction for our intent already lost to footsteps we can no longer retrace.

A six figure salary in my twenties filled my pockets with silver I had no time to spend, and all the while it emptied my soul of joy.  I forgot how to be still, how to watch the sun set and rise, how to let waves against the shore lull me to that peace found only in calm.

Now approaching forty years of age, I look back along the banks of my life’s river and feel dismay at the chaos.  Clear, smooth waters gave way to dark, rushing torrents clouded by confusion and disorientation.  The songs of tranquility vanished long ago beneath the deluge of diligence, greed, industriousness.

So now the dredging begins, the cleaning of a river that spilled over with life so many years ago yet now smells of ruin and decay.  It’s time to find the stillness again, find the wherewithal to stand firm and quiet when the world demands activity and noise.  It’s time to rediscover the serenity I once enjoyed.

Perhaps then the waters will clear, vitality and verve will surround its banks once again, and I can feel this has become my life once more, my destiny, my waterway of living that will be as beautiful and alive at its end as it was at its beginning.

I just need to be still…