Moving Quickly, Somehow Slowed

Perhaps it hasn’t been the best day. Maybe you spoke too firmly to a colleague, maybe your mother has commented on your not calling enough. The to-do list piling up, unanswered calls and texts, closing out a day of back-to-back meetings, unfinished tasks, a birthday next week for someone who needs a gift that you’ve yet to find. The evenings growing longer, the cold arriving, a lust for sunshine, but then — a soft snowfall outside your office window, pulling your attention from your screen with an almost childlike innocence. You eye the monstrous flakes as you power down and gather your items for the trek home.

Outside, the street lights have been on for a while and most people have already sat for dinner, but you’re a bit behind tonight. The snow hasn’t been falling long, but you wouldn’t be able to tell. Standing in the middle of the street, moved by the silence. How a small cover of snow can change the experience of the city. Nothing in the distance, a moment to think and gather yourself before the chaos and cacophony resume. A subtle crunch as you cross the road, the air just cold enough to see your breath. A soft, slow, sparse fall, with dense flakes. Tips of tree branches in the distance slowly gathering vertical mountains of snow, like tiny homes.

Perhaps it isn’t in the snowfall at dusk, but rather the sound of a canoe on a lake, water falling and rippling from the oar, the echo on the body as it’s set down to rest. Silent otherwise. Sun beaming on your neck, scattered light flickering off the quiet water. Drifting, nowhere to be.

Or perhaps after hundreds of flights, it’s in the sustained awe of an orange and violet sky rising from the blackness above the clouds.

Moving quickly, somehow slowed.

How have we been since we last had a moment like this? How long since we took a similar breath?