Time for Stillness

Time for stillness takes practice and consciousness. Whenever I feel time moving too fast, so much so that I believe I’m missing the moments that matter, I use this trick. I imagine my life as a movie, and slot myself as the director.  In this respect, I hold the power to pause a scene, go deeper into it, cultivate it. I stop, focus, experience one moment, immersing all of my senses into it. When I do so, time stands still.

This morning, my daughter slipped into my bed. She nestled against me and soon fell fast asleep. I stayed with this moment in all of its sensory wonder: the feel of her warmth against my skin, the sound of her breath, the way a strip of sunlight glossed her cheek. I imprinted it in my heart for an unknown future, a time when I needed to hold her close, to remember. My daughter was eight years old once and she loved to sleep next to me. She looked like an angel.

Whenever I visit my mom in New York, I catch her staring at me. The first time I noticed, I wanted to know why. “I’m studying you,” she said. “My mom used to do the same and always told me that she was studying me.”

As moms, we take mental snapshots everyday, and then save them, savor them, study them. Our children are fascinating beings that came through us, but are not us. We remain on a journey to learn through them, and hopefully discover a snippet of who they truly are . . . or perhaps could be.

One day, we’ll string these moments that matter into a powerful movie of what it is and was to be a mother. At that time, we’ll replay it, relive it against the soundtrack of our heartbeat. Love. Pure Love.

Capture a moment that matters today. Tuck it away. Keep it close.

Time moves so fast.

Be still.