Stillness

I had this (not at all freudian) idea to write about stillness in a moment where I could barely pause to write a paragraph whatsoever, with so much going on at the same time. Irony is pretty much a part of who I am at this point, so a week later I got to embrace it and here I am, seizing my precious minutes to finally write again.

While busy working, taking care of my home, being a functional human being and managing some ghost version of a social life, I have also been reflecting about myself a lot. We deep, friends. And of recent personal breakthroughs not relevant to this particular piece of writing, my understanding of what calm means has been shifting drastically.

Is a ravaging sea calm? Despite the constant movement, the relentless pull of the waves and the clash against the shore, the sand and pebbles and all the living things breathing along with the tide - I see calm. Serenity, some sort of stillness. I came to realize that there is no need for silence or emptiness to be still. The beauty of calm is in embracing your surroundings - and your inner movement too. Quiet is not the same as devoid of life.

That got me thinking about stillness in other applications of its meaning. A character can be still, unchanged by their surrounding dramas and conditions, and yet there is movement. There is always something happening, as small or trivial. Picture a leafy tree. Think of the abundance of its greens, the sunlight filtering through them, its ancient branches reaching up to the sky, the trunk so large it would require many to embrace it. A soft breeze shakes the many leaves. They sing their own song, the sound of wind, leaves, branch, bark, birds, grass. It is moving. But it is still.

What does calm mean in a story? Not the absence of happenings, but the way we think them. Where there are pauses, where there is only the world, still turning, still moving, even if the plot is not. I will leave this one for you to think about, while I try to find my stillness yet keep moving.

-Maíra