Dear Diary,
What color are rainclouds? The conditioned response in most people will yield a swift and confident ‘gray!’ Rainclouds are always drawn as dark, and when we look at them, it tends to be from one side only. However, have you ever looked out the window of a plane at those same clouds? They are no longer gray then, no? You instead see a bright, brilliant white! While we could discuss the physics of light reflection, absorption, and all that, the point was more about how it can be easy to see one side of something and assume you’re seeing the whole picture.
Akin to ‘What color are rainclouds?’ we are also conditioned to believe that attitude is a choice, that we have a ‘positivity switch’ inside us we intentionally choose not to flip. We’re told to be calm if we’re anxious, to cheer up if we’re depressed, and to move on if we’re grieving. Such additional pressure is counterproductive, as failing to do or be the opposite of where we’re at only compounds the pain we already feel. Often, the answer to negativity isn’t action in the inverse direction but non-action. It is stillness we need in times of strife, not an attempt to force positivity through deliberate countermeasures.
In my 2025 : A Year of Compassion in Review, I introduced the idea of ‘The Four Stages of Life.’ In this idea, peace comes before joy, and peace cannot be achieved without stillness. We can view stillness as an extension of the concept of ‘Rest’ from my previous pieces. Stillness isn’t just the stereotypical image of sitting cross-legged in a quiet place, trying to clear your mind of needless internal chatter. Stillness is also putting a stop to something, respecting a boundary, and using ‘no’ as a complete sentence. Stillness is allowing muddy waters to settle rather than exerting constant energy, and by consequence keeping the waters opaque.
Without stillness, there can be no rest. Yes, we can carve out comparative moments of ‘calm’ from chaos, but that’s survival, not healing. How often do we feel better just talking to someone, listening to a bit of music, going for a walk, or having a cup of tea? If we stop to ponder why, we’ll find it often has less to do with the activity itself and more to do with the *pace* of the activity. We have a casual conversation with someone we know and trust, a chat that winds, twists, doubles back again, and has gaps of laughs and random tangents. We release internal pressures when doing the other activity for a little while, and merely not being under the burden of pressure is a relief in and of itself. Now, take that feeling – that serene stillness – and expand it to more than a mere moment, and we begin to sense the scale of the stillness I’m speaking of here.
Stillness in the modern, busy life, wherein we’ve been conditioned to jump from one task to another, one emotion to another, without fully experiencing or processing the present, is more about deconditioning ourselves than anything else. Stillness is the ability to sit in the present long enough for the uncomfortable to become comfortable, whether we’re discussing meditation or anxiety. Being told or feeling compelled to act immediately when we think or feel something covers one thing up with another, without ever addressing the root cause.
When we think of ‘fully processing’ something, how often is our conditioned response to think of healing? We think of ‘processing’ as a synonym for ‘getting over’ a painful event or time. However, that’s only one facet of experiencing or processing something. How often do you look out the window or go for a walk and really take in what you see? How often do you acknowledge a tree, a cloud, a flower, a squirrel, etc., but never actually stop to pay attention to the details of your acknowledgment? Writing this piece, I’ve taken several breaks to enjoy my tea (Tangerine + Rose if anyone is curious), but I’ve also been enjoying watching the reflections of the fallen snow dance on the roof outside of my office. Each individual crystal shifts with wind and temperature, and it reminds me of the starry sky or the movement of a woman’s cocktail dress as she moves about.
The art of non-action is surprisingly complex for those of us who have been conditioned to never sit still, and that conditioning is all around us by design. On the contrary, I ask you this: ‘Who are the happiest people?’ They tend to be the ones who have just what they need because managing more than that causes more harm than it’s worth. What ‘need’ means in this case varies by person – some have a little garden, a book club, a favorite wine glass, and a well-worn blanket. Others may have a suitcase that gets packed just so. Some may have a group of friends and a favorite hangout spot or shared activity. You may be content learning something online by yourself, not lonely but alone. Others may have a little ‘more’ or ‘less,’ but if everything in your environment is contributing positively, you’re probably on to something!
The value of stillness isn’t just in letting thoughts and emotions settle, in giving us time to put down pressures applied to ourselves unnecessarily. The value of stillness also lies in processing the present to its fullest, on both large and small scales. Stillness, non-action, gives us greater opportunities to be proactive, to make calculated decisions about the best course to take rather than be stuck in cycles of reacting to whatever stimulus comes our way. Stillness should be our default place of being, a place we return to after our planned action runs its course. However, in practice, I imagine few of us have achieved such a state, *yet.* I take heart knowing so many of us are moving in the right direction, though, because stillness is achievable for us all, even if some of us only need to be told it’s ok.
I’m telling you now, it’s ok to be still. It’s ok not to force positivity on demand because we can admit it doesn’t work that way. It’s ok to pursue peace over joy, because true happiness will not come while we’re crushed by conflict. It’s ok to process and see the whole picture. You are worth it!
reBLUEvinate!
