Have We Lost the Art of Stopping?

In Constant Motion

I laugh at myself.

I have a half-open book on my left, my cellphone removed from its case at my right, my computer open and my internet divided into 6 windows – my gmail, my blog, my bank, the latest topic I am researching, paypal and a website that I liked.  Another open window is the company Lotus Notes, alerting me through a tiny beep from time to time that I have new mail and that I must open it asap.

My surrounding gives me the appearance of being busy, or always being in constant motion.  Productivity.  When I stopped just now, I find that my brain is betraying me because it is still thinking of other things to do.  It is still “doing” (or wants to).

Have we lost the art of not doing anything (in the literal sense of the word)?… Wait, does it even exist?

Because even if we are at rest, we are not.

Is there no rest?  But what is rest?

Is rest going home and eating dinner, watching American Idol, talking to the daughter, taking a bath, watching some more TV, talking to the hubby, cuddling and tucking and sleeping? 

Because even when I think I am slowing down, I am in constant motion.

Are people generally averse to stopping?  That even if we wanted to, we cannot?

Just now when I am trying to stop my thoughts, I thought about an article to write for my blog.  Mid-sentence, my cellphone began to ring.   An interruption, but a welcome one that would again propel me forward – to motion (I never stopped).

I have made several attempts.  I would lie awake in bed but I would feel guilty.  I feel that I have to have a book in my hands or turn the television on.  Or heck, I have to think how I would attack a certain topic that I am writing about.  Always that forward motion.  The clock ticking.

But how healthy is it?  How healthy is filling our heads with something all the time?  That its neurons will not be allowed to rest?  Does the brain get tired?  Then why does it do this and not allow us to just cease to be (even for a moment)?

Because even when we dream we are constantly on the move.  I swim deep and great distances, slay monsters lurking at my heels.  Or I fly.  Or try to get into the head of people.

There is no rest.  Rest is an illusion.

How have we let it be so?

Why the insecurity when we stop?  Why the impulse to continue surging forward?  That if we stop, all those behind us will overtake us or will lose their step.  As if the world will stop.

But it will not. (will it not?)

That in our motion, we hardly notice anything.  Not the dark corners of our office room, or our feet dangling, or the slight twitching of our left leg, or the hum of the airconditioning, of the sighs of someone next door, or just the clouds outside turning white then purple then black and disappearing but not.

Why this obsession with productivity or the appearance of productivity?

What have we missed because of this forward motion? 

What have I missed because I stopped or tried to stop?

It appears to me that since birth we have been on this roller coaster ride. Except that the controls are not within our hands and no shouts of “Stop!” or “I will get off!” will make the ride halt. (secretly, obsessively, we do not want it to halt)

Stop and smell the flowers, they say.  But is that it?  Because when I stop and smell the flowers, I am still visually processing it, taking in the colors and the scent, analyzing, thinking I may have smelled it before, or remembering, or trying to remember.

But isn’t this life, or the appearance of life? 

I am amazed at how hard it is to just stop.

We are racing.  Towards what, we do not know.  Or maybe we do know.  Because it is only dying which is certain, only dying which is at the end.  And we are racing to that?  Or racing to cheat that?  But how?  How can we have the audacity to think that we can cheat death by moving towards it as fast and as sure as we can?

Maybe we just think that we are tired when we are not, or that we are in motion when we are not (sometimes).  And that this is what we are meant to do.  And that we will one day get the rest that will silence us forever, once and for all.

But maybe not yet.

Article by Issa. Art by D. Copyright 2010.
blog: YouWantToBeRich.com
email: issa@youwanttoberich.com

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