When the world is crying for much-needed attention it can be difficult to pause, step back and allow oneself a moment’s peace. It’s easy to argue that taking time out won’t help to tackle injustice, eradicate inequality or shatter indifference. A frazzled mind and tired body, however, are just as unlikely to best serve or nurture a compassionate spirit.
Importantly, a moment’s peace need not involve elaborate rituals or out- of-reach sabbaticals. It can be found in the familiarity of a much-loved novel, the mundanity of a laundry cycle, even a colour. Often it can lie in the carefree enjoyment of creative activities, eschewing adult inhibitions and just painting, colouring, writing or singing, as though transported back to early childhood when perfection was an unknown world.
The benefits from these oases of peace are as plentiful as their origins are surprising. They can offer a chance to reset in an otherwise unforgiving and relentless scene, to process thoughts and feelings, and to shift perspective from doing to being.
Press pause today, even if it’s for only five minutes, and immerse mind, body and soul in the commonplace, the familiar, the mundane. Because if there’s one thing these precious moments of peace emphasise it’s that in a world where kindness is sometimes in short supply, denying it to oneself might not be the most effective way to redress the deficit.
