The Quiet Between Words

I was sitting on my porch this morning, trying to finish a book, but I kept getting distracted by the way the wind was moving through the trees. It wasn’t a loud day. There were no sirens or shouting neighbors, just the slow, rhythmic sway of branches against a pale sky. I realized then that I spend most of my life waiting for something to happen—a phone call, a deadline, a change in the weather. I treat the quiet spaces like empty rooms I need to fill as quickly as possible. But maybe those gaps aren’t meant to be filled. Maybe they are the only places where we can actually hear ourselves think. When we stop rushing to reach the next big event, we finally see the texture of the ordinary. It is in the stillness that we find the things we were too busy to notice before. Do you ever feel like you are finally breathing only when the world goes quiet?

Fidan Nazim Qizi has taken this beautiful image titled Interested in Photos. It captures that exact sense of stillness and quiet observation so perfectly. Does this image make you want to slow down and just watch the world for a while?