A Quiet Moment

A friend told me recently that I should try out a new iPhone app called "Calm". It "trains" you to sit quietly for a small amount of time - around ten minutes - and focus on your breathing and not on the busyness of whatever world you and your mind are physically and mentally in. It's a good idea, really. Not because it is effective in clearing the mind - I am no monk, the idea of training my head to become empty is not something I wish to achieve, nor do I think I have the capacity. It is because instead, it allows my head to let everything rush in - so that it can rush out again. 

When I sit empty handed, calmly and without physical distraction, I allow my mind to do what it is it wants without the cloud of the outside world. If thoughts and worries come in, I am open to it. I let the idea or thought sit, tread water, dance about - and then I let it go and make space for something else. It dabbles with worries and with inspiration, with plans and with past memories. And at the end of that ten minutes (at which point I am rudely interrupted by some generic American woman on my phone who, if I could picture her, would look a lot like Cynthia Nixon), I can get back to what it was that I was doing. Or I can grab at one of those musings and put action and gumption behind it. There's no green tea beside me or a candle burning - there's just me, and my comfortable sitting position, and my thoughts. And we're left alone for a quiet moment to ponder and play with my greatest fears and ambitions, with not one person and not one thing interrupting that.