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Stillness

JUNE 29, 2011 BY

TOM MATLACK

11 COMMENTS

(EDIT)

What happens when we stopeverything?

A couple of hours after I got to Paradise Valley, Montana I handed mylaptop and iPhone over to Stacy, the ranch guest manager. I hadalready snuck upstairs in the lodge to login on the ranch’s improvedsatellite Internet to put together a blog post.I realize going to a ranch is an extravagance. I was fortunate to havesuch an opportunity. So in one snap instant I decided that I couldn’ttrust myself to unplug. I needed to take action.When traveling I have a hard time really seeing what I am looking atright away. On this trip we went to Yellowstone the first day inMontana. We saw brown bears, coyotes, bison with their young, elk,and antelope.But it wasn’t until the drive from Bozeman to Paradise Valley onFather’s Day that I saw the vastness of the Montana countryside andthe snow-capped mountains, too beautiful to be real.The first night after turning in my electronic contraband I still felt jumpy. I had trouble getting to sleep and when I got up in the middleof the night to take a leak I was disturbed not to be able to check mytwitter feed.Monday I met up with my old friend Mags, a painted mare with whomI have bonded in prior years. She guided me through rushing streamsand up wildflower-filled fields to commanding views of theYellowstone River and Mount Emigrant.I laughed with friends along the trail and secretly wondered whatmight be happening in the blogosphere—a story aboutan

original

Playboy

bunny

and the

controversy over women looking forugly husbands

. But by the time I got back to my cabin and made a firefor my wife and kids a strange thing had begun to take root in me.♦◊♦

Stillness is a foreign concept in the modern world, and particularly for a stimuli addict like me. Yet I know from a fair bit of meditation inyears past that silence, and not moving, can lead not only to a senseof well-being but also to a deeper connection to the world.In my everyday life the closest thing I get to stillness is an odd cravingfor sleep. I can nap just about anywhere. But when I do, I generallywake up disoriented and on edge. It’s as if the assault of the modernworld grinds me down to a point of exhaustion but even my shortbreaks don’t get to the underlying issue. I wake up startled, with mydefenses up.Stillness is something completely different from sleep. It’s not a drugor an antidote to hyper-activity. For me, it’s the not-doing while fullyawake that leads to relaxation and a different level of awareness of my environment.When I move quickly I’m constantly reacting to the world on asuperficial level, bouncing around like pinball. The thing about