The Joy of Quiet
On this morning
of January 1, 2012, the day my new business “goes live on the web”, I woke
up to our normal Sunday ritual. I made the coffee, the fire, gathered the
Sunday New York Times and Alecia and I sat quietly together reading in front of
the fireplace.
Starting a new venture is either scary or exciting depending on
how you look at it. I truly have no idea of what will happen. Yet I have my
clear vision of the service that I want to provide and am certain that there is
an unmet need in the marketplace.
As I moved
through The Times one section at a time I came to the “Sunday Review”. I skipped
the first page entirely and read several of the inside pieces. Then, when I was
about ready to throw the whole thing in the “already read” pile, I noticed
that on the front page there was a circle. Circles have been sacred symbols in
many cultures and that fact alone seemed to grab me out of my habitual routine.
At the bottom of the page was an opinion piece written by the author Pico Iyer
called “The Joy of Quiet.” http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/01/opinion/sunday/the-joy-of-quiet.html?src=me&ref=general
This
article will be required reading for anyone attending the daylong or weeklong
retreats that my new business offers.
Everybody knows
that electronic screens, whether offered by TV or computers or smartphones have
taken over our daily attention. Mr. Tyer hits the nail on the head with his
observation that, “The only way we can do justice to our onscreen lives is by
summoning exactly the emotional and moral clarity that can’t be found on any
screen”.
On this first
day of the year 2012, The Center for
Imaginative Action, in the name of bringing peace and quiet back into our
lives, begins to offer its’ services at www.imageact.org.
1 comment:
Love your blog, Mr. Stevens! Quiet and thoughtful. I can almost see a Jung-looking fellow (though fitter and trimmer and with a better barber, of course) with a pipe and a warmed snifter of cognac. (btw, it's Pico Iyer, with an "I"!)
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