Waiting for the Quiet

I spent an hour this morning trying to fix a loose hinge on my kitchen cabinet. I kept dropping the tiny screws, and every time I reached for them, they seemed to roll into the darkest, most unreachable corners of the floor. I was frustrated, my breath coming in short, sharp bursts. Eventually, I just stopped. I sat on the floor and stayed perfectly still. After a few minutes, the house settled. The refrigerator hummed, the floorboards creaked, and a small spider began to weave its way across the baseboard. By doing nothing, I finally saw the things that were there all along, hidden in the shadows of my own busy-ness. It is strange how much we miss when we are constantly reaching for something else. We move through our days with such noise that we forget how to simply exist in the spaces between the movements. What would happen if we stopped trying to fix everything for just a moment?

Masudur Rahman has captured this feeling of stillness in his beautiful image titled The White-browed. It reminds me that there is a whole world waiting for us, if only we learn how to be quiet enough to notice it. What do you see when you finally stop moving?