The Edge of the Day

I spent this morning trying to organize my bookshelf, but I ended up sitting on the floor for an hour, just reading the spines of books I haven’t touched in years. It wasn’t productive. My to-do list was staring at me from the kitchen counter, yet I felt a strange, quiet permission to just stop. We spend so much of our lives rushing toward the next thing, convinced that if we aren’t moving, we are falling behind. But there is a specific kind of grace in the moments when the day begins to wind down, when the light shifts and the world seems to hold its breath. It’s in those pauses that we finally stop performing and start simply existing. It makes me wonder if we are actually meant to be as busy as we pretend to be, or if we are just afraid of what we might hear if we finally sat still long enough for the noise to fade. What does the silence tell you when you finally let the day go?

Jerry Caruthers has captured this feeling perfectly in his image titled Dock at the Bay. It reminds me that there is always a place to rest if we are willing to look for it. Does this scene make you want to slow down, too?