I think most of us understand that there is a health need in us to slow down and smell the roses. Or, we might say, to be less involved in continuous, harried thought and vigorous action. Some of us might call it spending less time in doing and more time in being, but can we imagine what it means to be? Suppose someone asks, “What are you doing?”, and we say, “I’m just being.” Sounds kind of gauzy and smarmy; but it is needed. When my kids were little, one of my sons would sit on the shoulders of a big, wing chair and silently look out our bay window for lengths of time. When I asked what he was doing he would simply say, “Nothing.” At that time I did not understand that he was just being. He was subtly disengaged from his personal locale and was quietly moving into his universality, enjoying his “leaky boundaries, discovering more of his non locality, maybe doing what Walt Whitman might have called, “inviting his soul.”
Coming back to themselves...
When I listen to the comments of some of our esteemed military veterans with PTSD, I think that, at least for a while, they have lost the capacity to just be. Their open spaces are not open but filled with horrific dreams, memories and flashbacks. Among other things, they need help in coming back to themselves.
Welcome sanity indeed...
In lesser ways, so may some of us…need help allowing for space that is not filled with things to do, places to go and people to see. What is the inner child in us but that little kid who emerges to figuratively sit on the shoulders of a welcoming chair to look into beyond the beyond. Some may think we are crazy to spend time in such a way. I think it is not craziness but welcome sanity indeed.
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