By VICTORIA MESCALL
Editor in Chief
It is so easy to get caught up in the whirlwind.
Between practice and class and interviews and appointments and babysitting and lab reports and staff meetings and chapter – once it starts, it rarely stops. The world keeps turning no matter how hard you try to stop it.
But you can control the speed at which the world turns – at least in your own life.
Just by being still.
It is so important in this crazy, fast-paced life we live to take a pause. Not every day, but every so often.
Take a moment. Breathe deeply. And be still.
I realized it after I spent a dinner laughing with my best friend. After a day of work and class and a soccer match, we sat with pizza and wings spread out across her kitchen table. We ate, and caught up, and laughed. And when the night was over, and I had returned to campus and the responsibility of the real world – I realized it had been quite some time since we had done that. Just sat, and ate, and talked.
We get so caught up with our busy, busy schedules filled with sports and school and parents and jobs and friends and significant others and bosses, that is nice to just have a few hours where we’re in the same place at the same time. With nowhere to be, and nothing to do but just be still.
To me, being still means finding a moment where I can let out an exhale that I didn’t even realize I’d been holding in.
Being still is when the world melts away and I just think, ‘I wouldn’t want to be anywhere but here’. There are no blackboard assignments due by midnight and there’s no emails to be sent, or people to check on, or appointments to make.
Being still means peace.
Being still means calling my parents and catching them up on my day. Being still is facetiming my best friends abroad. Being still is going to visit my little and my brother and getting to watch one of their games.
When I see them, I feel like my batteries get recharged. That’s being still.
Being still is not wanting to or needing to check my phone or the time. Being still means being fully focused on and invested in the people I surround myself with.
The moment is gone almost as quickly as it came. The stillness is replaced with motion. The commute home, the approaching due dates, the finality of the passing hours.
It is so easy to boil down the worth of your life to things you can put on a job application. But I am so much more than the things I list on my resume. And being still is more than a bullet point in the list of my life.
Being a sister, a daughter, and a friend are the most important jobs I will ever have. And those are positions that I don’t list when applying for a job.
It is so easy to get caught up in this success driven culture. That if it can’t go on your college application, then it isn’t worth your time. But worth is relative.
And moments where I can be still are worth so much to me.
At the end of the day I want to be present. I want to show up for the people I love. I want to be known as someone who picks up the phone. The one who’s sitting in the stands cheering you on. The one who loves unconditionally and supports wholly and empathetically. And the one who can be constantly in motion, or who can just be still.
