You can tell it’s a holiday week because it’s so quiet! While the official day may not be here yet, the traffic tells me many people have already put work behind them. I love quiet days with empty streets. My favorite time to be downtown has always been when businesses and stores are closed. It just has a whole different feel.
Like most of our lives in the US, we fill the holidays with activity. Some of us plan elaborate meals with elegant place settings and seats assigned by calligraphied place cards. We clean for hours so we can fill the kitchen and dining room with dishes that will take more hours to clean. We work, work, work only to discover our guests must rush on to another dinner before the ice cream melts on the pie.
We watch parades and football and go back home without knowing what our cousins do for a living or where their kids go to school. It’s amazing how we can busy ourselves into a noisy frenzy that leaves no time for quiet, forget quiet reflection or thoughtful attunement.
How did we get so uncomfortable with stillness?
The barrage of two competing screens is barely enough to distract some in my home. What I keep coming back to is how on edge all that noise makes me feel. Is noise the cause of the anxiety that plagues them?
I guess what I’m wondering is why we create a frenzy and then suffer from the effects of it? Seems a lot like chasing our tails.
What would happen if we sat on the porch or in front of the fire this Thanksgiving and listened to each other instead of watching balloons float down 6th Avenue or channel surfing through games?
What if we just sat in the quiet? I know it probably sounds like I want to go back to the past. That’s not it.
What would happen if we stopped rushing, pushing, scrambling, hurrying…distracting, distracting, distracting? Especially, when we are actively creating part of our need for distraction.
What if Thanksgiving dinner were a normal supper plus a fancy dessert? Would we take more notice of the flavors and effort put into that one item? Would we take our time and savor it? Would we talk about it while envisioning the preparation? Would it remind us of stories of other desserts at other times – stories that would allow us to connect with the new in-law at the table?
You can say all you want about mindfulness, but quiet stillness as a default would allow us to relax into the present rather than applying laser focus to it.
Where has the ease of being part of the rhythm of the world gone? Perhaps it’s still on the ski slopes or under the curl of a wave. But we no longer feel it in a gallop beneath us on our way to get groceries or hear it in the crunch of a wheel on gravel.
At a recent party, someone asked my Serbian neighbor the biggest difference between living in the US and Serbia. His answer was how much less time we spend sitting and visiting – taking time during the day to enjoy each other and connect.
We have rampant anxiety, violence, addiction, and chronic illness all on the rise. I’m not 100% blaming those on a lack of quiet. But I think it’s worth studying those conditions in order to discover if there are ways in which they correlate with a lack of it.
And I’m certain it’s worth asking yourself why the next time you feel compelled to fill a piece of quiet with noisy, frenetic activity.
This morning I ran across the term strategic patience. It wasn’t used in the context of foreign policy with Russia. This strategic patience was used to describe a technique employed by teachers in which students are asked to remove themselves from electronics and quietly observe a math formula, graph, or painting. Sometimes the duration of the assignment was only 1.5 minutes, but that time had a positive learning result.
but are we, or would strategic patience serve us better?
Curiosity would be a good theme for the year. It’s a choice that could lead me to watch documentary movies, spend time learning programming on Codecademy, attend lectures, try an escape room game, join a meetup group, try online dating, or read science fiction. It would also be a chance to step back and get curious rather than angry in any confrontational interaction.
Peace is a good theme for any year. For me, it usually begins with being mindful of spending my time with people who exude calm and kindness. It also means making a choice to curb my impatience when communicating with tech support and customer service reps.
Comfort sounds like a possibility. If I choose it, I’ll be mindful each day when I get dressed to choose fabrics that feel good on my skin, shoes that do not hurt my feet (no matter how cute they are), and waistbands that allow me to breathe. I’ll sleep on sheets that feel good. I’ll eat food that doesn’t hurt my tummy. I’ll choose furniture that fits me well.
Stillness is one of my favorites. Being able to sit still did not come easy to me, but has given me some of the biggest improvements in quality of life. Stillness can include a practice of meditation or yoga or can just be simply turning off the TV, computer, or phone, and spending time with yourself. 
After some thought, I think my theme for 2016 will be boundaries. It’s an oldie, but a goody. Good boundaries are essential for healthy relationships and give me a guilt-free space in which to say, “no”. Lots of things remind me to be conscious of my boundaries: fences, curbs, ropes, hula hoops, parking spaces, walls, cubicles, carrels, plates, placemats, elevators, swimming pools, basketball courts, tennis courts, porch rails, squares, circles, and doors. Lucky for me, the reminders are everywhere.