Stillness: The Liminal Space Between Stimulus and Response
In a world where things seem to be broadening into an ever more absurd hellscape, with multiple wars and human atrocities being eclipsed by the 24 hour news cycle and a wealth inequality that seems to be exponentially widening, it can all feel rather hopeless sometimes.
Of late, I’ve personally been noticing a lot more people who are either becoming more emotionally reactive to it all and allowing themselves to be bought by “us vs. them” thinking, or who are the other kinds of people who are becoming overrun with cynicism in the face of it all. Even while there is good reason to see hope and find goodness in our world, those two extremes feel like the result of living in a society where fewer and fewer people have learned to find themselves in stillness.
As Viktor Frankl once wrote, “Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.”
Many people are overcome with stimulus and response but little time in between.
And that leads the responses to tend toward either absolute aggression or absolute apathy.
We need more training for people to find themselves in between the stimulus and their response. To find themselves in the stillness.
When I used to teach martial arts, one thing I often tried to share was the idea of being soft and relaxed and yet ready for a physical response when needed. In essence, to find a liminal space between perfect comfort and extreme response. We want to walk our path without constantly being on-edge and overwrought but also with the assuredness that we can respond if and when needed. (That’s why the best martial artists aren’t those who act like tough guys and walk with their shoulders raised and fists clenched — they’re the ones who you might not even know to have the ability to strike at any moment because they have composure and control.)
The same idea holds true in how we go about our lives. In any field of inquiry and any discipline or profession, we must be controlled and yet capable, prepared to take on the stimuli that require a response — capable of accepting what we cannot change and changing what we can when it must be changed.
How do we find that place of preparedness in our lives?
As Ryan Holiday, of the Daily Stoic, often points out “stillness is key”. The stillness is the liminal space between stimulus and response. It’s the widening of the moment to an experience.
One reason I argue for developing a daily meditation practice is to work on your stillness, to work on your mindfulness, through training. Much as the martial artist trains their body to respond with a kick or a grappling move and the Olympic sprinter trains their body to be able to jump from the blocks and immediately run with excellence, we need to train our minds to find stillness, especially in a world where we are constantly being battered by notifications and DMs and emails and monthly fees and taxes and more.
The world around us is screaming for our attention and our responses all of the time. But with some training, we can truly put our attention on the present moment and find our stillness.