Quiet Solitude

Can you sit in quiet solitude?

Can you sit and feel the sun move across your face as it moves through the sky? Can you watch birds as they call and dance in the yard, visiting feeders and birdbaths? Can you witness the leaves as they fall during the change of season or the snow blanket the ground? Watch the waves lap on shore or a fountain bubble and froth?

Or do you always need to be doing something? Even when resting, does your mind or body cry out to move, think, or do something? Anything but sit quietly in solitude.

My invitation to you is to find a place of calm routinely. Let yourself settle. Be in the moment, be where you are resting. Not in meditation but in observation. Open your senses to what is around you. Find one thing that catches your attention and linger. Then, linger longer.

As demanding thoughts press in, acknowledge them and intentionally let them flow by you. Return to where your senses guide you. Release your shoulders. Sit taller. Take a deep breath and then another. Let everything go except what your senses are focused on.

Then, after a time, smile, feel the love you just embraced yourself with, stand up, and carry what peace and grounding you found within yourself back into your day.

Sitting in quiet solitude is a challenging exercise. There are so many demands pulling at us—every day. We have the pressure of work and the clamor of family. We place expectations on ourselves to provide for the needs and wants of others. Combine these things with societal expectations and managing daily needs, and it is not surprising that sitting quietly in solitude is not high on your list of priorities.

Is it even on your list? How about your wishful thinking or someday on vacation list?

What were you just thinking about?

No, really, what just popped into your mind?

I ask this because this exercise is an act of self-nurturing that centers on self-awareness and acceptance. Of Self. You will be taking a very intentional, intimate step into the core of yourself. The only thing invited into this place and time is what you let your senses focus on. And what bubbles up from within you.

Whether this time touches you as gently as a feather or jolts you like static electricity, I’m convinced you will be opening yourself to self-exploration and stepping toward discovering who you are.

Where will you go today to sit in quiet solitude? Yes, my friend, today 💙