You Can't Clean a Dirty Fan While Its Moving: Learning to Find Stillness

My son has a fan in his room, and he does not ever want me to turn it off.

The constant rotation, the constant movement, the constant sound is soothing to him.

Every once in a while, though, I have to turn it off, let it completely come to stillness and then and only then can I give the blades a good wipe down.

One would think because it is constantly moving nothing could stick to it. Dirt, filth, congestion, wouldn’t be able to find its way on to the smooth surface of the blades while in propulsion.

Yet every time it comes to a stop, and I have a few moments to wipe it down, I am amazed at how much it has accumulated.

I used to function like that fan.

I used the busyness of life as a way of distraction from the “debris” I was collecting.

The harder things got, the more I took on.

The more I tried to keep myself moving with plans, activities, parties, constant striving for perfection and movement.

Even drama, gossip, politics, news, how miserable work was, and the juggling of it all. It was all constant motion.

I thought I did not need to stop moving.

Or maybe I was scared if I slowed down that I would crumble under the weight of all that had been accumulating.

Does that sound familiar to you?

Have you found yourself caught on the hamster wheel of life - or should we say the fan of life?

It took me a long time to understand that the more I stayed in motion, the more actually stayed the same.

I wanted, I craved a different direction, a different feeling of peace and the sensation of being settled in life, a different level of meaning.

Yet, I kept going round and round, adding more and more on to my constant rotation thinking that the “more” or the “different” would fill the void I was feeling inside.

I would hide my constant motion under the guise of “doing good.” I would convince myself that it was completely necessary - because I was a “do-er,” a “go-getter,” an “over-achiever.”

When what I really needed was to turn the momentum off.

I was using my continuous activity to hide from the emotions, desires and fears inside that I truly needed to clean up.

To shed myself of the debris, the stress, the distractions, the constant quest for more.

I had to find stillness.

I had to allow myself to not only stop spinning, but to come to complete rest from all of the spinning I had been doing for so long.

After brushing myself off.

After letting go of all that I had been clinging to and accumulating, all that had started to hold me down without even realizing it.

I found there in the silence, in the void of motion - peace.

Everything I had been looking for wasn’t wrapped up in the busyness of life.

It was in the quiet of it.

There is a saying that you can find the solution to a problem in the same vibration that the problem exists in.

You have to move yourself outside of it.

So, while I know it may sound absolutely impossible to turn yourself off for a moment.
I promise, you can.

You can turn yourself off, at least for a moment, dust yourself, wipe everything off…
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And then you get to decide if, and how fast, you want to keep spinning.

Begin Your Journey to Stillness