What if we spent more time practicing stillness?

In my aboriginal 20s, I gave tours astatine the Metropolitan Museum of Art. I co-taught this bid called “The Observant Eye,” during which we spent our Friday evenings looking astatine a azygous artwork for 1 hour. On folding chairs, we’d look astatine Dutch still-life paintings and Northern Renaissance portraits, Baroque sculptures and past Chinese scrolls. We’d walk the archetypal minutes observing the fixed artwork successful silence, and past stock what we noticed, what caught our eye: a protruding vein connected a hand, a curled toe, an unfastened door. From there, a speech would fluidly build; we’d scope corporate epiphanies and uncover humanities lessons by simply looking astatine the artworks for what sounded similar an inordinate magnitude of clip — astir radical connected mean don’t observe an artwork for longer than 20 seconds — but we ever wrapped up the hr with much to say.

“The Observant Eye” became, for its regulars, a ineffable ritual, a clip for intermission successful a metropolis that didn’t nurture pause, a balm successful the frenzied gait of our municipality and integer lives. But this request for stopping and contemplation is not lone a modern one, arsenic evidenced successful those artworks successful the galleries, galore of which were centuries aged and made with the volition of being pondered successful the acheronian corners of churches and chapels.

It’s adjuvant to person a framework, a structured environment, for marinating successful stillness. It tin consciousness uncomfortable and unnatural to conscionable sit, sorb and not move. Meditating connected a yoga mat has ne'er worked for maine personally, but I tin look astatine a coating for 60 minutes successful a museum.

The stories successful Image magazine’s May contented travel done assorted environments that promote oregon necessitate stillness — from the blistery tub astatine the spa to the temple and adjacent the dentist’s chair. If there’s 1 happening these spaces clasp successful common, it’s that they region america from our routines done a displacement successful temperature, a vibrant color, an lack of sound. At the Met, I felt this displacement arsenic soon arsenic I walked done the entranceway hallway and saw the caller flowers spilling retired of the gangly ceramic vases.

It wasn’t lone the artworks that I came for connected Friday evenings. It wasn’t adjacent the conversations (though they were nourishing too). It was mostly for the feeling that came implicit maine aft having stared astatine the cracks successful the lipid overgarment oregon the slippery shadows connected chunks of marble — arsenic though my eyes had been washed and they were yet seeing, not thinking. When I walked toward the exit, past the flowers and into the night, I felt for a infinitesimal a benignant of clarity.