I want to sing the praises of stillness. I used to love, and aspire to, extravagant energy and zeal. Arms waving, voice elevated, eyes wide open and shining with conviction.
Now I enjoy stillness, a sense of calmness in a speaker. Of course, I don’t want him or her to be calm all the time—the Johnnie One-Note of stillness—but I like seeing moments of animation contrasted with something that is at rest inside.
There is a Buddhist story of a man who was convicted of a crime and sentenced to being an oil-carrier. Whenever the emperor needed some sacred oil in one of his temples, the convicted man had to carry it brimming in a shallow bowl to the altar.
If he spilled one drop, the soldier, who always walked one step behind him, would slice off his head.
One day, when the oil-carrier was moving through a busy street with a bowl full of oil, and the soldier behind him, a crowd gathered to watch the most beautiful woman in China dance to a chorus of hypnotic instruments.
The oil-carrier stopped…and lived.
How still was he?