Chasing the Unseen

I spent twenty minutes this morning trying to catch a stray cat that had wandered into my garden. It was a blur of fur and nerves, darting behind the hydrangeas every time I took a step. I kept trying to predict where it would go next, but it was always a second ahead of me, moving with a rhythm I couldn’t quite match. Eventually, I just stopped. I sat on the grass and waited. And that was when it finally slowed down, pausing just long enough for me to see the way its eyes caught the morning sun. It made me think about how much of our lives we spend rushing to grab hold of things, convinced that if we move fast enough, we can own the moment. But maybe the best things aren’t meant to be caught. Maybe they are only meant to be witnessed, provided we have the patience to stand still while the world spins around us. What happens when you finally stop chasing?

Jabbar Jamil has captured this exact feeling of stillness in his beautiful image titled Not an Easy Catch. It perfectly illustrates that quiet patience required to find order in the middle of a whirlwind. Does this image make you want to slow down, too?