In an age of distraction, nothing can feel more luxurious than paying attention. And in an age of constant movement, nothing is more urgent than sitting still.
~ Pico Iyer
On a morning when a client doesn’t show up for a coaching session, it is tempting to fill the space with busyness. I send out a reminder and sit, looking at my laptop. To write or not to write? Outside, it is a blustery day, the forecast of a cyclone along the coast of Chennai urging Bangalore clouds to skip together to make a rainy afternoon. A chilly gust blows over me because I’m sitting in the verandah of my parent’s house, where we’ve been parked for the past 3 months waiting for our house to be repaired of heavy monsoon seepage. In an hour, my music teacher will arrive for my weekly lesson in Hindustani classical music and today, I am grateful for how it will slow down my morning. Until then, I write, luxuriating in how this process too slows my heartbeat and my thoughts. I breathe in air scented by incoming rain. The last month of the year arrives with noisy thunderstorms, bringing the holidays closer, wrapped with the gifts of travel, weddings to attend and time with my boys and their little families. Meanwhile, Sherpa, our 16-month-old husky-retriever puppy has settled down on the cool stone floor and is looking out into the distance sleepily, ready for a mid-morning nap, space and time completely irrelevant until his mealtime. After the past few months I’ve had, slowing down deliberately on a normal weekday feels like such luxury. In the background though, I hear the loud buzz of mechanized garden shears ripping through the undergrowth at the far end of the garden and sigh. True luxury, I’m learning, is quiet time. December feel like a good month to celebrate it.
Every single client I’ve worked with these past few months begins their check in with how incredibly hectic their life is. As they speak of the frenetic pace of their work, the squeeze on their time and their endless busyness, I am struck by its embodiment on their bodies and voices, the stress and tension and anxiety felt and visible in every word and movement as they remain activated, switched on all the time. We are what we practice, my teacher Richard Strozzi-Heckler says. And practicing quiet time begins with switching off, slowing down, surrendering to the rhythm of this season. I find it hard too, coming at the end of a busy year. And I know how essential it is to feel the deep quiet to experience true deep rest. Wisdom shows up in the last coaching session of my day, when a client leader with a thoughtful presence tells me he will lean in to renew his energy during his end of the year break. We discuss what he could practice in the meanwhile, small spaces of quiet time that he confesses sound like luxury. I am encouraged to hear that and tell myself if he can, so can I, feeling hopeful about the extravagance of a year-end retreat I’ve booked for myself. Listening to the quiet need for quiet time in my heart.
As the year winds down, winter sunlight plays hide and seek with the rain in Bangalore. In the distance the city’s new metro line is being banged into existence, metal clanging, the sound echoing over the waters of Nagwara lake. I focus on my breathing as I write and feel the deep quiet inside. Celebrating the season can be noisy, along with all the other ways life is noisy today. So when colours are too loud, lights are too bright, sounds are too much, movement is too jarring, lean in to a moment or two of quiet time, whether it’s a drive without music, a phone on silent, a closed door in a quiet room, a walk in a quiet park, or just soft conversation with someone you love. Let the luxury of the hushed moment fill you up and take in as much as you need. Happy Holidays!
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