Stillness is being present. It’s absorbing what’s around you, allowing the silence to grow loud. Stagnation is being stuck. It’s spinning your wheels with the brakes on. Generating so much hustle and bustle that you block everything else out. It’s easy to become so focused on trying to get somewhere you forget to actually get there.
We commonly use the word routine in a derogatory fashion. As something lacking in excitement and devoid of value. But if we let ourselves take it all in, we change. In fact, we always change, whether we want to or not. But being present lets us grow.
Imagine this. Every day, you take a picture of the same thing. You do it any way you like without a concerted effort to do it the same way. You come back to the series 10 years later. Same thing. Probably very different results. You’ll see how you’ve changed as a photographer and a person. Now reverse it. You give yourself a different project every day. Watch what you do. Maybe you always research things first. Maybe you look for inspiration. Maybe you grab a coffee mid-day to reflect. Maybe you stress out near the end of each project. You see your patterns. You see how you repeat yourself. Constancy reveals change. Change reveals constancy.
So if you find yourself stuck and pressured, it needn’t be for not. Breathe. Settle in. Enjoy your time with yourself. It often feels like everyone is going somewhere, and you’re not. But it’s not whether everything around you changes. It’s whether you change the way you see everything around you. You can be still without being stagnant. They say the more things change, the more they stay the same. I think the reverse holds, as well. The more things stay the same, the more they change.
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