Mostly standing still

Julia ♦ March 19, 2025 ♦ 2 Comments

West Sussex, England — Photo by Emma Simpson on Unsplash

Are my boots old? Is my coat torn?
Am I no longer young, and still not half-perfect? Let me
keep my mind on what matters,
which is my work,

which is mostly standing still and learning to be
astonished.  — Mary Oliver

Bereavement, grief and aging are slicing through much of what once seemed inviolable to me. Not only has my life changed; I’ve changed as well. And I find that other people in my life have changed, too, whether from circumstances in their own lives, a discomfort with proximity to the magnitude of what I’ve endured, or some combination of both.

It’s painful to realize that most of what once lent meaning to my daily effort is now gone, rendered irrelevant or exposed as illusory. The blessing in the falling away of so many distractions is the increased time for standing still and learning to see larger, more impressive vistas that may have been obscured by busyness or trivial worries. And very little, it turns out, is about me at all. What a relief!

For those of us granted a long life, so much abides through the seemingly endless losses. How breathtakingly enormous a universe, that even our limited portion of it is filled with wonder and delight! What astonishes you today? Start with the view outside your window right now, and let your mind wander into infinity briefly before you return to your less important work.

This post was first published seven years ago. As so often before, I find it remarkable that the thoughts I expressed here have only grown more relevant to my life after the passage of seven years. How could I have already known then what now seems so tied to recent experience? And what am I doing now that will seem meaningless seven years hence, if I am still alive? That larger vista grows ever more impressive!

The original post, comments and photo are linked, along with two other related posts, below. These links to related posts, and their thumbnail photos, do not appear in the blog feed; they are only visible when viewing the individual posts by clicking on each one. I have no idea why, nor do I know how they choose the related posts. That’s just the way WordPress does things.