The Weight of the Wait

I once sat on a stone bench in a train station in Lyon, watching a grandmother and her granddaughter share a bag of roasted chestnuts. The girl was restless, kicking her heels against the metal frame, while the older woman sat perfectly still, her hands folded over a worn leather purse. She wasn’t waiting for a train; she was simply holding space. There is a particular kind of patience that belongs to women who have seen enough of the world to know that rushing rarely changes the outcome. They carry the history of their family in the way they sit, a quiet gravity that anchors everyone around them. It is a silent language of endurance, a way of saying that we are here, we are together, and that is enough for now. We spend so much of our lives trying to be somewhere else, but have you ever considered the power of simply staying put?

Keith Goldstein has captured this exact stillness in his beautiful image titled Three Women. It reminds me that even in the middle of a busy city, there is always a pocket of calm if you know how to look for it. Does this scene make you want to slow down, too?