protecting pockets of stillness

how to embrace a fallow season, even when life is busy

Years ago, someone I knew likened their morning coffee to a holiday. They told me it was the twenty minutes in their day where they didn’t do anything else but sit and drink. Sometimes there was a book, sometimes there were just thoughts. Those twenty minutes were consciously protected to create a safe, still reprieve.

I’ve thought about the concept of ‘a coffee as a holiday’ countless times since. And I think it’s particularly pertinent at this time of year, as the last of the leaves fall and we shift into winter. In Lutruwita (Tasmania) the palawa people recognise three seasons instead of the four in the European calendar. Tunna is our long winter, extending from May to August. The trees are in tune; there’s still a few golden branches but most are bare and they are the reminder we need to acknowledge our dwindling energy, the internal ‘turning down of the lights’ so we can rest.

I protect the stillness of winter because by doing so, I protect myself. But it’s not particularly easy to do when six weeks of firm deadlines and a significant work load stretches out in front me. I don’t want to manifest it but I am also realistic; there will probably be sniffles, despite my focus on lemon water, orange quarters and chicken soup. I am not curling up in my den, reading by candlelight and drinking tea, whiling away the season under a blanket. But that doesn’t mean I can’t create these moments every few days, carve out the space to sink into stillness - if only for ten minutes, perhaps an hour.