You don’t even need to leave your room, just sit at your table and wait.
Don’t even wait, just listen.
Be quiet, be still, be solitary.
The world will fully offer itself to you, to be unmasked, it has no choice.
It will roll in ecstasy at your feet.
- Franz Kafka
Growing up I’d imagine that adults knew more than I did, that they were, at least, certain of their words; now, as an adult myself I know this is not true. At no point do the societies I have come across make an effort to teach people how to be parents, how to be adults, how to live. I thought I could get on the train tracks, perform well in the things asked of me and find myself arriving at a place of undeniable success; now I’m off the train and looking at the school systems and how careless they are, how little value is placed on the schools by the society, how it does not prepare one for life outside of school (Life!).
I’ll argue that if we make a list of the things we are not taught we will have a good list of some of the most valuable things in life. Love, meditation, personal finances, parenthood, interpersonal communication, empathy, and slowing down. Learning to stop doing doing doing as if it were getting us to another place where we need to be in order to receive something. Learning to be still, be quiet, notice what is happening, noticing the pile of stuff that you are carrying around and that built up in your runaway busy-ness. Stop. Don’t even wait. Just listen.
Stop and become intimate with yourself.