Stillness, wrote the great Irish poet John O Donohue in Anam Cara, is vital to the world of the soul. If one becomes more still as they age, they will discover that stillness can be a great companion.
This is my experience. Stillness is the friend I always sought, my cherished companion.
In stillness, the disconnected fragments of my life have begun to unify; the broken places of my soul are finding the space and time to knit and heal.
“You will be able to return to yourself in this stillness,” wrote O’Donahue, who died unexpectedly in his sleep in 2008 while visiting the Avignon area of France, “you will engage your soul.”
In recent years, I began seeking and finding stillness in my life, and it has been transforming me ever since.
In stillness, I see and face the truth about who I am, the good and the bad. I collect all the parts and become whole.
Knowing myself is so different than not knowing myself. It changes everything. Old wounds have begun to heal, new opportunities open up.
We live in a world where strangers always tell us what we should be feeling, who we are.
Arrogance and self-righteousness are the poison of the times that attacks the soul and the spirit. Humility grows when I face the truth about myself; I can’t imagine telling other people who they are, knowing how hard it has been to know myself.
I know all kinds of people who know so many things – places, music, books, people – but who don’t seem to know themselves; they haven’t taken the time to find peace, solitude, and stillness.
We are so busy, so distracted, so persuaded that we can never be safe enough unless we work day and night to make more and more money, and buy more and more things, that we forget ourselves and lose track of who we are.
We are absorbed with worrying about the future we forget to grasp the present. We fail to live.
Amid all the hoary old talk of our culture, I sometimes lose track of my blessings.
Aging can be a lovely time, wrote O’Donohue shortly before he died, a time of ripening when you meet yourself, perhaps for the first time.
People have been telling me who I am, what to feel, what to be all my life. But as I get to know myself, I discover that I can understand who I am, what I think, and who I want to be.
That is a strength I never had before. I look inside for my truth, not outside. I love the idea of ripening. That is just the right word.
For all its complications and aches, aging is a lovely time to me; I get stronger and find that solitude and stillness are my great friends and companions. It is a time of discovery, letting go, loving myself, and permitting others to love me.
Thomas Merton writes that every moment and every event of every person’s life on earth plants something in his or her soul. “For just as the wind carries thousands of winged seeds, so each moment brings with it germs of spiritual vitality that comes to rush imperceptibly in the minds and wills of men.”
Most of these unnumbered seeds perish and are lost because most people are not prepared to receive them. Such seeds as these, Merton writes, cannot spring up anywhere except in the good soil of freedom, spontaneity, and love.
“And the end of our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started,
And know the place for the first time.”
- T. S. Eliot