One of the key realizations I’ve gained in my journey to continue to evolve as I age is that I need what I call “still time” in order to re-center or stay centered. Living in a society where we’ve accepted “being crazy busy” as a status symbol that validates one’s importance, we’ve become inured to the reality that if we don’t keep this pace in check we can easily equate being alive with constant motion.

We rush, rush, rush, overloading our days with endless lists of things that we convince ourselves must get done. Periodically I envision living beings in outer space that have the capacity to watch us racing about, and I wonder if they describe us as “hamsters churning our training wheels.”

While there are many favorable benefits from being productive, being in constant motion can work against our best interests. Being in motion without pausing for reflection can lead to our engaging in activities that may not be congruent with how we identify what is really important to the quality of our lives.

Think of toys that we played with as children; you wound the key in their backs as tightly as it would go, then you set them on a flat surface and the toys spun around in circles until all of their energy was depleted. This image is probably connected to the expression “he or she is tightly wound” that is used to describe someone who behaves frenetically. If I’m not paying attention, I can find myself in one of those “wound” states, and I just keep moving, crossing things off my to-do list without really attending to how I’m doing.

I find that when I let myself fall into the “old habit” of thinking that I have “to get through my of list of things needing to get done today,” I make myself more vulnerable if something happens to interrupt my attending to the tasks on my list. By vulnerable I mean I’m so tightly wound or on a mission that I’m less able to take a moment to think about how I want to respond before I actually respond when I encounter and unanticipated delay. So, for example, if I go to pick up my dry cleaning and for some reason it is not ready, my initial reaction is irritation. Because I really like and have great respect for the staff at the dry cleaners I use, I’m able to refrain from saying anything negative, but I’m not so sure that my body language doesn’t signal a message of irritation.

A few more words on my dry cleaners; the staff are incredibly hard-working, efficient and consistently pleasant – even when summer temperatures raise their work settings to what feels like 100 degrees. It makes sense that occasionally there is going to be some kind of mix-up. When I’m centered and I encounter a situation where things don’t go as planned, I can usually find a way to put such an occurrence into perspective. In this case, I can most often figure out something else to wear if need be.

Let me share an example that has become a great metaphor and helpful reminder for me when I feel myself moving out of balance. I live in the Greater Boston area and there is a large mall in the City known as the Prudential Center. Located in the Center of the City, there are numerous skywalks that allow pedestrians and guests at the multiple anchor hotels to move about without having to go outside. These skywalks also provide shelter for City visitors and residents during periods of inclement or extreme weather. I often use them when it is raining heavily or bitter cold.

One Friday afternoon as I was heading home from work, I cut through the Center to catch the commuter rail. As I was making my way through the passageways, I noticed this strange looking, moving object in front of me. It was about 5 feet tall, phallic shaped with a silvery metal exterior. Ambling along at a very slow but what appeared to be a purposeful pace – actually more like a shuffle – with a “head” that rotated 180 degrees, it moved slowly along the corridor. It had a girth of about two feet, so it was definitely noticeable, but I didn’t see anyone else in the crowded walkway paying much attention to it.

At the time, I was doing a lot of research with a colleague on AI – Artificial Intelligence – and the increasing role of robots in our lives, so I was quite enthralled by what I was seeing. I decided to abandon catching the next train as I wanted to follow this intriguing critter. It kept a steady but very slow pace as it wandered along, turning right or left at the intersections of multiple passageways to travel a different corridor. I spent about 30 minutes trailing this new species. Finally, at one point halfway down one corridor, it reversed direction, stopped momentarily, and then seemed to be on a mission with a destination in mind.

After about five minutes, shortly after starting down a different corridor, it stopped suddenly, made some adjustments to where it was standing, and then slowly began backing up. Eventually, it climbed onto what I can best describe as a “docking” station. It seemed content to just rest there.
By this point, I was fully captivated. There was a concierge desk nearby, so I inquired of the friendly looking gentleman staffing it, and I asked him, “What is that?” His humorous reply was something like this: “It’s a robot and every now and then, I send it out to get me a cup of coffee.” He had me for a moment since he replied with a serious, straight face, but his smiling eyes gave him away, and I knew he was playing with me. When I asked him again, he said the robot is actually part of a security network, and it roams the corridors, constantly sending pictures to the main security station for the facility.

He shared that when its batteries get low, it senses that and heads back to its docking station so that it can re-charge. How Perfect!!! What if we could all monitor our energy levels, and when we feel we’re getting depleted or un-centered, wouldn’t it be great if we could learn from this robot and just shuffle our way back to our docking stations to recharge.
Stillness is a great docking station as it gives us time to pause, reflect, and be more mindful about what we deem important in our lives. My friend the robot has become a great meme for me. Whenever I feel myself getting stressed or out-of-balance, I smile as I picture myself needing to head to my own docking station. If I want to have the energy and mindfulness to evolve in ways that are meaningful to me, I need to have quite time to listen to what my internal compass is telling me.