Editor’s note: We’re discussing Pico Iyer’s The Art of Stillness together this month. Catch up on last week’s installment here.
The insurance claims world, where I spend much of my time, is a noisy and demanding arena. In certain seasons of the year, one might even say it is relentless. I have had colleagues who routinely scheduled vacation time only to come into the office so they could catch up on work without being required to answer the phone. Because I now work in the field and from my home, I lack one of the benefits of the corporate cubicle: a workspace with at least partial walls delineating where work is expected to happen, and a wired phone to confine it to that space. Instead, I always carry two phones with me (one work, one personal, so I at least maintain that distinction) and am expected to respond. And my desk shares space in the house where I eat and sleep and relax and read.
One of the gifts of my weekly visits to the monastery a few years ago was that, in the hills, there was no cell service. Entering the grounds was in some ways like entering Superman’s fortress, the silence of the place, at least in my mind impervious to outside forces, a truly enveloping one.
The lack of service was so certain that I stopped leaving my phone in the glove box and even neglected to turn it off when I arrived. This was a mistake.
During one noontime visit, my phone, which was set to vibrate, started to vibrate. Even with the padding of my body and a down-insulated vest, when a vibrating cell phone meets the acoustics of a vast sanctuary of stone walls and hard wooden pews, vibrate should really say reverberate. I lunged as discreetly as I could, there on the kneeler, folding my body over the sound, knowing that to pull the phone out and turn it off would have been even noisier.
The monks were gracious enough to continue along unflinching, though it seemed a helicopter had just landed on the altar. I did get a little ribbing from one of the brothers over lunch. What I had done was impolite, of course. But it also felt ruinous, as though this event was a small desecration of a space that offered such strength in silence.
I have learned, over time, and am still learning in some ways, when I truly do need to be connected to my phone or computer, and when they can be turned off and set aside.
In The Art of Stillness, Pico Iyer talks about our “need for an empty space, a pause, ” and notes that this is “something we have all felt in our bones; it’s the rest in a piece of music that gives it resonance and shape.” While he claims no particular connection to a religion, he recognizes the practical implications of keeping a Sabbath of sorts, of “doing nothing for a while.” And has discovered that, contrary to his fears that taking time away from work will just mean more work later, that “the more time I spend away from my work, the better that work will be.”
The need for such a pause in our lives is great. Iyer notes,
Some people, if they can afford it, try to acquire a place in the country or a second home; I’ve always thought it easier to make a second house in the week—especially if, like most of us, you lack the funds for expensive real estate. These days, in the age of movement and connection, space, as Marx had it in another context, has been annihilated by time; we feel as though we can make contact with almost anywhere at any moment. But as fast as geography is coming under our control, the clock is exerting more and more tyranny over us. And the more we can contact others, the more, it seems, we lose contact with ourselves.
Many people find that “second house in the week” by setting aside a day a week to read, or the practice of sitting still outside, if even for a few minutes each day. I take a partial digital Sabbath, devoting a good portion of one day each weekend to reading and writing, without connection to any devices. Creating these spaces in our lives, even if small, can help us consecrate what Rabbi Heschel, as quoted by Iyer, calls “a cathedral in time rather than in space.”
Book Club Discussion
We’re reading The Art of Stillness: Adventures in Going Nowhere together this month. Are you reading along? Perhaps you would share in the comments about your experience with (or need for) creating a “second house in the week.” How have you been able to carve out small pauses in the busy spaces around you? What stood out to you in the chapters this week?
Our Reading Schedule
Announcement Post
December 7 • Introduction to Chapter 2
December 14 • Chapters 3 & 4
December 21 • Chapters 5 & 6
Photo by Blake Buettner, Creative Commons license via Flickr. Post by LW Lindquist.
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Donna Falcone says
This is bringing to mind my work with teachers of very young children – probably because I am physically so close to my last work homes at the moment – and a dear friend who I met in Grad school who had lived all over the world and, prior to grad school, Israel. Her impression of the early childhood environments she had seen here in the US seemed to launch her crusade for this “second house” in the classroom. She would say things like “this room is so busy – look everywhere – where can a child’s (or a teacher’s) eyes go to rest?” This had a very powerful impact on me and forever altered how I worked with teachers or on my own in creating classroom spaces. The more “stimulating” the environment (visually or auditorially), the more assaultive it felt to me and I had to assume to the children. I began to see that MOST classrooms for young children were overstimulating, trying to teach a concept or a skill through each of the five senses at every moment of the day. I wish I could remember the research at the moment, but the value of quiet spaces and subdued areas for respite are well documented. Early Childhood Rating Scales include these in the characteristics which identify HIGH QUALITY environments. So interesting to see Iyer mention the second house… the necessity of finding ways to create spaces for respite can not be over estimated in my opinion. Some children are extremely sensitive to such things and I discovered that I had been one of them! This is what Iyer is talking about, in a different context.
Will Willingham says
And now you remind me of the way my kids were when they were very small and we would take them out to stimulating environments — a shopping mall, a basketball game. They’d take a look around and in the face of hyper-stimulation would go instantly to sleep. I suppose as adults we’ve learned to navigate around that defensive response of our bodies and minds to such environments so that we don’t fall asleep in situations where we must be awake (driving, the workplace, etc.). But I wonder what does shut down inside when we are overstimulated in any number of ways, and at what cost..
I love this about the classroom, Donna, and creating a place for the “eyes to rest.”
Donna Falcone says
That is so interesting about your children going to sleep like that. I’ve seen this before… my sister when we were little, and my oldest son as a baby….
I’m remembering the character Burt, from Soap, who used to “make himself invisible” with the click of his fingers when he became overwhelmed… it’s the self defensive, protective act of dissociation, yes? It’s not always a bad thing, but it can carry quite a cost depending on circumstances.
If we cannot ‘have’ a place of respite … that “second house” … our mind will often create the next best thing. Not as desirable, but often just as necessary.
Will Willingham says
Oh, gosh. I haven’t thought about Soap for a long time. 🙂 I loved Burt.
And yes, our mind will create for us where sometimes we will not.
Michelle Ortega says
I’m right there with your kids~too much noise and I feel my brain melting away. I used to love making tents out of any corner when I was young. Tori was like that, too. She’d retreat to her stroller and pull the awning down over herself whenever she was overloaded.
Now, the room I spend most of my days in has a rich, ocean blue on the walls and little else, just a treatment table in the middle, a small shelf in the corner for the salt lamp and a little desk lamp, and one photo of flowers on the wall, alongside my treatment table (like a massage table). Still, that is not a place of silence for me, but of deep concentration when I am working with someone.
I keep thinking about this “second house in the week” and realize I need to make one. I am one who keeps a lot of space in my calendar, but I am amidst a very busy life season and can’t see a place for it moving forward. That’s how I know I MUST make it happen. Great timing on this book~have actually felt more stillness just reading it.
Maureen says
What a fine reflection, Donna.
The idea of a “second house” in the space wherever one spends the most time is refreshing. Perhaps that is what’s behind the notion of some of the tech companies that have set aside spaces for employees to play or nap or read quietly. A day packed with meetings or other activities, as at schools, is exhausting. Iyer is wise and also practical about how to find the stillness we all need.
Even those of us who are writers and spend a lot of time alone appreciate the value of finding stillness.
As always, excellent discussion, LW.
Will Willingham says
I really love this idea of a second house in the week, of carving out that space without needing to take drastic measures like a trip somewhere. I recently modified my office (yet again) to create a third workspace that is not at all digital, just the large wooden library table with a few books and sea shells in the corner. The openness and warmth of the wood, with my back to the rest of the office, is a peaceful resting place where I can read, write or just sit and drink tea. It’s altered my experience in this room all over again.
Thank you, Maureen
Michelle Ortega says
Seashells always have their way with us, don’t they?
David Willingham says
The mind can be still even if the body is not. Many cyclists find mind stillness in the moving effort of riding. To ride so hard that your mind cannot think of anything else but not dying from the effort, is a relaxing and renewing stillness.
Will Willingham says
I’ve heard this from cyclists before, and in the limited riding I do, I find it much more mind-stilling than even walking. It’s certainly not from riding hard in my case, but I’ve always felt like the sort of motion, smoother than walking, has something to do with it.
Megan Willome says
Yep. That’s why I do it. Every time I don’t die is worth the effort.
Donna Falcone says
I love all of this….
Laura Lynn Brown says
Andy Hayes’ instructions on creating a reading nook could be one item in a “10 ways to create a second house in the week” post.
I love this idea of a second house in the week, too. Of time as place, though it can also be place.
My cat is a pro at stillness. And it seems she has many second houses, especially places that are temporary. Any cardboard box or paper grocery sack. A small square pillow on a rocking chair, slipped from its vertical lumbar support pose to a horizontal tuffet. A pile of laundered cloth napkins and placemats waiting to be ironed. The cavelike space beneath the Christmas tree. A magazine on the floor. She’s a long lanky cat, but she can arrange herself within its boundaries. When she’s especially settled on my lap in my reading chair, it’s a second house for both of us.
A hot bath, with a book and a drink, is one of my second houses. And for a time-specific stillness, it’s the morning, before light, before bird sounds.
I think maybe this is the appeal of some of the go-to places for stillness that I mentioned the first week: a museum, a library, an empty church sanctuary. They’re a second house physically; but they are all also places where people are expected to be quieter than in other public places.
Camping used to be my second house, and one thing I loved about it was the absence of so many things in a first house. Like Wi-Fi. I think your partial digital Sabbath is so important, and it’s a good thing to schedule into a week. It can also be chosen on the fly, as simple as putting the phone in another room or taking a walk without it. Nowherelessness has a downside, and it’s the nowhere — or rather part-here, part-not — that devices take us to. Some sort of necessary defragging, rebooting, recharging happens when we are, well, left to our own devices, stuck nowhere with ourselves.
Thanks so much for this book discussion, LW. And for the timing of it, Tweetspeak.
Michelle Ortega says
Laura, thank you for all these ideas. I am a tub and candle soaker, although I will also use the tub to soak if there is a movie I can stream on my iPad, too.
I love the dark winter mornings~there are some pretty faithful walkers in my neighborhood, and when I was getting up early to walk last year, we would just smile and nod to each other as we passed, like a secret society, not wanting to break the stillness with even a greeting, but wanting to connect in our endeavors. Maybe I need to revisit this practice~had stopped from an injury, but the injury has healed. 🙂
And I do love the space of an empty church sanctuary. I have been pondering a visit to the Princeton U chapel in the morning~I travel there, about an hour from my house, at least twice a month to my satellite office, and that location may be changing soon. I may make a point of it through the next few months when I’m there…
So many possibilities, my mind is now far from still, but moving in the right direction!
Megan Willome says
“Of time as place, though it can also be place.”–according to Einstein, there’s little difference.
SimplyDarlene says
What I do//Where I go:
Once a week or less, I close the closet door, turn off the light, sit on cold cement as I lean against the wall between the safe and the stack of plastic bins that hold long underwear and wool socks (all while trying very hard not to think of the spiders that the sticky traps have caught; and of the renegades still on the loose) until a dog or a kid starts scratching at the door.
(For me, I find stillness when I don’t know that I’m needed. But there’s also the rub – because if I’m not needed, what’s my useful purpose? My center? My fulfillment?)
I’m off the rocker here with the reading. I’m on chapter 2 as I thought the pattern was a chapter per week. I hope to catch up and re-visit these posts, LW.
Michelle Ortega says
“I return to being awake having had enough of second houses and respite, and start to unclutter the first house knowing I really kind of like it here.”
This, yes. I really like my first house, too, and the second house helps me remember that!
Michelle Ortega says
I duplicated this~when I meant to say, Darlene, that spiders in sticky traps would definitely interfere with my own stillness, haha! But glad you at least have found a place to escape. 🙂
David Willingham says
There’s a place I often go
when nights are long and spirits low
A place that only I can find
because I go there in my mind…
Its like an old trunk in the attic that holds all the stuff
that only means something to me. Ideas, memories,
experiences, losses and failures. Sorting through them
reminds me of where I’ve been on the way to where I am.
Reprises whatever wisdom they contain, and steadies my
course. I often find things I had forgotten or lessons I have
been ignoring. And sometimes the collection brings new insight
which then becomes a new item to the collection. Its best not to
stay there too long, as although the past is prologue, at 75 I don’t
have too much logue left! And then I remember that all this stuff
belongs only to me, has meaning to me alone, and is only there to
inform my future and I return to being awake having had enough
of second houses and respite, and start to unclutter the first house
knowing I really kind of like it here. I like where I am and who I’m with
and what I’m doing. After all the dust and melancholy make my eyes
water.
Michelle Ortega says
“I return to being awake having had enough of second houses and respite, and start to unclutter the first house knowing I really kind of like it here.”
This, yes. I really like my first house, too, and the second house helps me remember that!
L.L. Barkat says
This sentence itself just felt so “at home”:
“I like where I am and who I’m with
and what I’m doing. ”
Loved that.
Sharon A Gibbs says
I am catching up on the conversation, but happy that I waited until now to chime in because of the OnBeing podcast I listened to yesterday. In the podcast, Krista Tippet quoted Pico Iyer.
I share it hear. Well worth your time. http://www.onbeing.org/program/gordon-hempton-silence-and-the-presence-of-everything/4557
I have come to realize that nature is my second home–how the breezes caress my face, the grass winds sigh against the fields, and the loons’ cries curlicue into the summer night air. When taking pictures in this second home, I lose myself and all sense of time.
Silence is an endangered species, says Gordon Hempton. He defines real quiet as presence — not an absence of sound, but an absence of noise. The Earth, as he knows it, is a “solar-powered jukebox.” Quiet is a “think tank of the soul.”
Hope you enjoy.
And Happy New Year to you all.
Will Willingham says
Sharon, thanks for passing along the On Being link. And yes, I agree, quiet is — or I should say, can be — more of a presence than an absence. It’s an actual thing, not a vacuum or void. 🙂