Stillness Is the Key by Ryan Holiday

The soft paw prints of a cat on the dusty trunk of a car. The hot
steam wafting from the vents on a New York City morning. The smell
of asphalt just as the rain begins to fall. The thud of a fist fitting
perfectly into an open hand. The sound of a pen signing a contract,
binding two parties together. The courage of a mosquito sucking
blood from a human who can so easily crush it. A basket full of
vegetables from the garden. The hard right angles that passing trucks
cut out of the drooping branches of trees next to a busy road. A floor
filled with a child’s toys, arranged in the chaos of exhausted
enjoyment. A city arranged the same way, the accumulation of
hundreds of years of spasmodic, independent development.
Are you starting to see how this works?
It’s ironic that stillness is rare and fleeting in our busy lives,
because the world creates an inexhaustible supply of it. It’s just that
nobody’s looking.
After his breakdown and nearly two years of struggle and
depression resulting from overstimulation and too much study,
where did John Stuart Mill find peace again for the first time? In the
poetry of William Wordsworth. And what was the inspiration of so
much of Wordsworth’s poetry? Nature.
Theodore Roosevelt was sent west by his doctor after the death of
his mother and wife to lose himself in the bigness of the Dakota
Badlands. Yes, Teddy was a hunter and a rancher and a man’s man,
but his two greatest passions? Sitting quietly on a porch with a book
and birdwatching. The Japanese have a concept, shinrin yoku—
forest bathing—which is a form of therapy that uses nature as a
treatment for mental and spiritual issues. Hardly a week passed,
even when he was president, that Roosevelt didn’t take a forest bath
of some kind.
How much cleaner we would feel if we took these baths as often
as we took hot showers. How much more present we would be if we
saw what was around us.
Bathe is an important word. There is something about water, isn’t
there? The sight of it. The sound of it. The feel of it. Those seeking
stillness could find worse ways to wash away the troubles and
turbulence of the world than actual water. A dive into a nearby river.
The bubbling fountain in a Zen garden. The reflecting pool of a