“You should try standing still”
Some years ago, prior to moving to St. Louis, I made a home in Brooklyn, New York. It was there in a coffee shop one afternoon that I came into contact with James Murphy, a musician and artist otherwise known as LCD Soundsystem, a band I really enjoy. His music is typically very upbeat and extremely danceable, and I would often listen when I went running in Prospect Park, down the street from my apartment. When I spotted him in this coffee shop, I felt compelled to tell him what his music meant to me, and the way this came out was, “I listen to you when I run.” Without missing a beat, he replied quite matter-of-factly, “You should try standing still.” I was not expecting this response at all and I’m not quite sure what I said back, if anything. But this phrase has stuck with me ever since. What may have come across as witty banter on his part has actually revealed itself as something more profound to me.
“You should try standing still.” As someone who practices meditation, this resonates. We are meant to believe that to be productive, to be engaged, to be useful, to be successful, to be alive…….is to be in motion. Active. Doing something. We need reminding that we are, in fact, human beings, not human doings. What does it mean to simply “be”? I believe it can be found within the cleverly poignant suggestion given to me that day in Brooklyn.
What happens when I become still? I can still my body. Can I still my mind? More challenging, but yes. And with that stillness comes the potential for greater awareness and understanding of feelings, clarity of thought, and (literally) peace of mind. For me, this takes lots of practice. But I find it to be completely worth my time and energy. It’s how I want to move through the world. I move when I need to, at various speeds with varying energy. I still run in my neighborhood park and I sometimes drive faster than I should. But I know how to stop, how to breathe, how to find calm and feel ease.
A new favorite activity of mine is to take myself to the art museum here in St. Louis, which is what I did just yesterday before my first therapy session. At a certain point I found myself in a gallery space with a massive floor-to-ceiling window looking out at a sculpture garden. I sat alone in this gallery space, looking out of this window. I sat still and straight. I sat and breathed and gazed out at the sprinkling rain. After a few moments, I could hear laughter and chatter as a group of about a dozen high school students and their chaperone entered the space behind me. One by one they came and sat on either side of me, and as they did, they began to slow down. The gallery became quieter. I continued to sit still, just looking forward out of the window, when I heard one student say to her friend “Is this art?” Hearing this made me curious, and when I looked over to see what she was referring to, our eyes met. I realized, with pure delight, that she was asking about me, sitting still and looking out at the rain.
Just a human, being.