The Ghost in the Current

It is 3:14 am. The house is holding its breath, and I am staring at the wall, wondering why we are so terrified of standing still. We spend our lives running, convinced that if we stop, the world will simply move on without us. We blur our own edges to match the speed of the crowd, terrified that someone might notice we aren’t actually going anywhere. But there is a specific kind of violence in that constant motion. It is a way of hiding from the person you become when the noise finally dies down. I think about the people who refuse to run. They are the ones who make the rest of us feel exposed. They stand in the middle of the river, watching the water rush past, and they don’t look like they are missing out. They look like they are the only ones who have arrived. What happens to the soul when it stops trying to keep pace with the clock?

Von Christopher Trabado has captured this quiet defiance in his photograph titled Against the Flow. It reminds me that standing still is often the most radical thing a person can do in a world that demands we keep moving. Does the stillness feel like peace to you, or does it feel like being left behind?