The Art of Staying Still

I spent this morning trying to fix a leaky faucet in the kitchen. I had the wrench in my hand, the floor was covered in towels, and my phone wouldn’t stop buzzing with emails. I felt like I was vibrating with the need to be everywhere at once. Then, I looked out the window. A neighbor’s cat was sitting on the fence, just watching a leaf drift down. It didn’t care about the plumbing or the deadlines. It just sat there, completely unbothered by the noise of the street. It made me realize how much energy we waste trying to match the pace of everything around us. We think that if we stop moving, we’ll fall behind, but maybe the real trick is knowing when to let the world rush past while you stay perfectly, stubbornly still. It’s a quiet kind of power, isn’t it? To be the only thing in the room that isn’t trying to be somewhere else.

Pesch Andreas has captured this exact feeling of quiet confidence in the image titled Young Swan Looking Very Content. It is a beautiful reminder that peace is often just a choice we make. Does this image make you want to slow down, too?