The Case Against Stillness
On abandoning absolutes, embracing synchronicity and answering an ancient call to fly
Before I left Slovenia for Luxembourg last October, I started listening to my first Ryan Holiday book, Stillness is the Key. Traveling slow through Slovenia, I experienced an extraordinary flow and synchronicity between what I had been reading and how I had been feeling and moving.
I have often talked about the powerful and resonant one-two punch of Sharon Salzberg’s Lovingkindness followed by Suneel Gupta’s Everyday Dharma. They landed squarely in front of me just when and as I needed them to.
The night before I was to answer the bell of a 3 AM wakeup call that would officially mark the end of my travels, I decided to wind down a late evening in Luxembourg City with the final chapters of Holiday’s bestseller.
Just before I clicked play, however, I felt the sweetest surge of gratitude rush through me. Not wanting it to fade, I did everything I could to invite it to settle and stay. It was never so obvious as it was to me then that over the last few weeks travel had bestowed great gifts upon me.
The difference between who I was when I arrived in Europe that October and who I was heading back home as, almost a month later, was truly astronomical. I had made real progress in realizing who I wanted to become and that I had it in me on my best days, and maybe even on my worst, to walk the path. To try.
There had been collisions with purpose, and encounters with unforgettable taste and creativity, which had not only encouraged but empowered me to keep dreaming and creating.
There had been lessons in resilience and fortitude that inspired me to bet on myself, trust my gut and draw from, not dampen, the shine and strength of my soul.
There had even been glimpses of a bigger picture I’d been desperate to see, glimpses that lifted my heavy head just enough to ensure I stayed in motion.
While I knew this amazing trip and chapter was coming to an end, I also knew another chapter had already gotten started right behind it. And so as I turned off the lights in Luxembourg, I thought “mission accomplished,” not in a proud, boastful sense but in a humbled, indebted one.
I am sure then, in the moments that followed, knowing every minute of shuteye mattered as it did, that I wished I had followed that peace and quiet with stillness and sleep. But I’m a doer and so I hit play to finish the book. Ironically, it was then that a single chapter, “Beware Escapism,” of Stillness is the Key roused and enraged me.
Whether he meant to or not, Holiday was reducing my lifelong companion in self-discovery and connection to its most basic and under-utilized form. Quotes like “There is nothing wrong with a good vacation, particularly if the aim is solitude and quiet” and “you can’t make something great flitting around” lace a chapter that includes other brands of escapism like drugs, alcohol, and golf. The golf comparison, I frankly found the most insulting.
Kidding.
Holiday presses on with calls to action to stay still. “Travel inside your heart and mind and let the body stay put.” But the quote, which spiked my blood pressure to new heights, had to have been, “if true peace and clarity are what you seek in this life, and by the way, they are what you deserve, note that you will find them nearby, not far away.”
Admittedly, Holiday’s book is about Stillness, so I’m willing to cut the guy some serious slack. But where I come to exacting disagreement with him is his tendency to summarily dismiss travel as a legitimate method for connecting with a deeper, purer version of ourselves.
It was the absoluteness of his treatment of travel as a lesser, trivial distraction that offended me so that evening. There I was on the eve of going home from weeks of prolific and stimulating movement, closer to my calling than ever before, with these incendiary, blasphemous words chasing me home like a bully.
They were not the palate cleanser I was hoping for. But I knew I had to accept them nonetheless for the cantankerous transition they were. They had a remarkably significant role to play.
This affront was itself a kind of synchronicity I had slid into. Not the easy, harmonious flow but the effective, counter kind. I had read this book, and I had finished it just when and as I did, and that meant something. After all, this title had slid into my Bibliothèque Intérieure in a most peculiar way. Just like Lovingkindness and Everyday Dharma found me when I needed them to, so too did this point of view, this petty assault on the transformative power of travel.
Digesting this, distasteful as it was, was part of a plan, part of how I was going to arrive at the doorstep of my purpose and calling. I had a choice before I fell asleep that night. I could let this perspective dissuade me or I could let it motivate me.
As the world closes in on itself, with physical and figurative borders harder to cross than ever before, this black and white view of travel as an indulgent escape with no regard for its power as a tool of self-discovery seemed to me to be as one-note as it was close-minded. Travel has the power to transform because it opens our eyes and hearts to new ideas and people. It inspires reappraisal and human connection. At all costs, I believe movement in advancement of this mission must be protected and promoted. We don’t live in a world that allows us to choose stillness over equality and shared humanity.
I disagreed with Holiday’s take as strongly as I did because I have found through personal experience the opposite to be consistently true. Never more so than in the last eighteen months, when my journey of self-discovery and reinvention has transformed me into a loyal student of both sedentary and active paths to peace and quiet.
During this spell of life, I have found the peace and alignment Holiday speaks of by employing a hybrid approach. By striking intentional balance between movement and stillness and seeing the two as an inseparable, complementary set, I have found that stillness inspires movement, just as movement inspires rewarding, contemplative stillness.
It’s an ongoing process, cyclical and iterative, just like my journey. It’s not a one-size-fits-all template, but rather a personalized recipe that only we know how to mix and master.
So yes, I believe there is a case against stillness. And that case is that it is not always the solitary solve and salve. It requires a counterpart to be effective. One should not exist without the other. Perhaps one cannot exist without the other either?
As I was plotting out Tessera 62’s reflection, I fortuitously came across a note on Substack from Jonny Thomson’s @philosophyminis account which put the German concept of Zugunruhe in front of me. I did not think the placement or timing to be coincidence.
Zugunruhe is the restlessness a bird feels when it’s time to migrate. It is something ancient that awakens within it and declares, “fly.”
It is a case against stillness.
Migration is not escape. It is fate. It is purpose. It is calling. It is the natural way of doing things. Moving when we must, as we must.
There have been pivotal times in my life when movement and intentional change of scenery resuscitated me, reversed a state of inertia that no longer served me or coaxed molting and metamorphosis from nothing more than complacency and malaise. In those moments, moving jarred a piece of me loose that needed the chisel of the world, the rub of new perspective, the taste of something brilliant and unexpected.
I don’t believe transformation should only be instigated from the inside out. We need the influence of one another, the beauty and natural wonder and awe of this world to provoke and inspire us, just as we need moments of solitude and stillness to internalize and reconcile it all.
I defy anyone to tell me I was frivolously escaping when I left for Vietnam after being laid off in 2024. I was deliberately turning to movement to avoid stagnation and self-pity. I was sliding another lens in the viewfinder. That lens – fresh perspective – is what my mind, body, gut and soul craved after being tethered for eighteen-plus years to a rigid and draining corporate identity and all-consuming ascent.
I chose to position myself in front of the only access points I have ever known to bring me back to my center – color, storytelling and taste. I wasn’t fleeing, I was expanding, re-remembering, returning.
This summer, as momentum in purpose crashes into reality with no clear path to monetize it, I have a choice to make. I choose movement. Stillness, in this season for me, feels like defeat, playing it safe, hedging.
I have chosen instead to uncharacteristically bet on myself, put one foot in front of the other and expect without timidity for the path to rise up and meet my feet. I have chosen to absorb the vibrancy, humanity and vigor of Mexico City and Cape Town. I’m headed back to Vilnius because the call back is too loud to ignore. Movement is part of my journey right now.
Zugunruhe. Something ancient that awakens within. Go, it says. Migrate, it means. The case against stillness isn’t so much about finding fault with sitting still, it’s finding it impossibly irresistible not to flit around and fly.
Be ready to move with meaning with travel calls you to action. The Mosaic Index is a framework for recognizing the signals shaping how we travel and why certain places and moments stay with us.
If you’re curious what your pattern looks like and want to understand more about what moves you, start your Mosaic below.
