If You Don’t Stop Moving, Life Will Stop You!

I am in constant motion. Have been this way since I crashed my way out of the womb trying to enter the world feet first. I think I was ready to run to my next assignment even at this stage of my life. However, even though I wanted to make my appearance this way, Life stopped me. “Hey you, little baby, slow down, enjoy your birth.” So the gynecologist took his prongs and turned me around in my mother’s belly, forcing the correct entrance into this life.

Next, I was crawling around on my parent’s bed, again moving fast, wanting to experience everything at the age of 9 months and Life stopped me. I fell off the bed; hit my upper left lip on their nightstand. Their darling baby had torn open the area right over the left upper lip and off to the hospital I was taken. “Hey, little baby,” slow down, lie on your back and contemplate your navel for a change or we’ll slow your life down for you.” Stiches to the upper lip created a branding of my how I needed to practice stillness.

There are numerous stories along this vein, I could write a book: “100 Ways Life Stopped Me, and I Still Refused to Be Still”. Miracle of miracles though, at the impressionable age of 19, I found a spiritual practice offering me an avenue to slow myself way down and finally contemplate the navel I’d been avoiding. Balance had been welcomed into my life and I was able to focus my energies more effectively.

I must confess though, having a writer’s soul, I always appreciated nature and would at the age of 15, 16, spend hours outside listening to Laura Nyro on my boom box while lying on the sand amidst the trees and brush in a Cape Cod hideout. Music tranquilized my energetic being as well and still works magic on my ever-moving body.

A writer must quiet their soul to hear the muse’s voice, so I am in perfect agreement with the advice below in the quoted material. In the last paragraph, sentence two, it is suggested, “Allow stillness to enter you.” Isn’t that why Thoreau found his way to Walden Pond?

I have found out the hard way if I don’t stop moving, LIFE will certainly make sure I’ll experience some event forcing this ever moving writer to slow down and catch up with my feelings, thoughts, poetic being.

Read the advice below so you can decide how, when and where you want to be still so you don’t have to have Life speak loudly to your writing soul.

“It’s surprising how little we do it these days. Sure, we’re parked goggle-eyed in front of our computer screens more than ever, but that’s not what I’m really talking about. I’m talking about allowing moments of stillness to enter your life and stop you, so that you can fully and absorb the life that’s normally rushing by.

When the officiant of the wedding (is that the right term) asked everyone for a moment of silence to remember a beloved family member whom we have lost, in the ensuing silence I felt myself truly experiencing the loss again, allowing myself to realize what it really was. I was reluctant at first; I didn’t want to feel those feelings again. But ultimately I was grateful for that moment of experience. The funny thing about human emotion is that, as Wordsworth said, it must be “recalled in tranquility” to be truly felt and understood.

So today, sit down and sit still. Allow stillness to enter you. Feel the things you’ve been avoiding feeling. Experience the more genuine thoughts and feelings you’ve had lately; you may be surprised how adaptable they can turn out to be for your fiction, if you really pause to think about them. Once you’ve sat still and understood what has moved you lately, you’ll be refreshed and ready to write about it all. “

I think that this is sage advice… I am actually became more of a believer yesterday than I have ever been. LIFE spoke loudly again to me yesterday! My right pinky finger now dons a huge white bandage and splint. What is Life trying to tell me now?