Our Inability to Stay Still
Posted on November 22, 2021“Find a moment of stillness, give your heart a chance to tell you where you really need to be”
– Dodinski
A candle lighted up, an incense burning, darkness, silence, I am sitting down, my eyes are closed, my mind in the present moment – that’s all I needed to be, still. But am I? Is it even possible to stay still in this world? Even if I am consciously motionless, everything inside and outside my body is in constant movement. I can feel my heart and my chest moving with my breath. I can hear the cars passing by, people talking, so much going on. At that moment I realized, nothing in the universe can stay completely still. Every molecule, every atom, data, nature, the planet itself is restlessly functioning. Movement is part of us, not chemically nor physically can humans ever be static. However, as conscious beings, we can have either involuntary or voluntary movements, and this last one is what I am trying to focus on as most of us find it very hard to voluntarily stay still.
If we go to the point in time when human beings began to have a constant desire to be in movement, we will land in the Paleolithic Age where humans lived as hunters and gatherers mobilizing themselves as a survival instinct. Then the Neolithic Revolution occurred, when prehistoric human beings gave up this nomadic life and established in one place, founded villages, and began to farm the land. Many archeologists agree that the Neolithic Revolution changed humanity forever as the roots for civilization were planted along with the first crops. Everything that came afterward, including cities, overpopulation, inequality, poverty, technology has origins at the moment where people decided to live in communities but competing with one another. As the population increased, so did the rivalry for resources and their access to them. The Neolithic Revolution was supposed to help human beings to settle down and stop moving – but it’s no surprise that this was just temporary. In the end, it led to even more movement than before – but this time, mobilization was not driven for survival but for greediness and ambition.
As Ahmed Ansari says in his article Decolonization, the History of Design, and the Designs of History living in a community is having “the desire to be seen, heard, and read; to be in community with others who understand you and are similarly invested in not only the same projects but similar views, commitments, and desire.” But what happens when an individual is not seen, hear, or read in that community? Most likely, that person will mobilize to another community that might do acknowledge those things, because as needy humans, one of our biggest desires is to be recognized and valued in society.
Everyone is always looking to move somewhere; people are just in continuous search of a place that will fulfill their needs. In our society we want to be positioned under the spotlight, we want a place on this planet where we can be noticed. I find it very interesting to think that even though human beings are considered free agents when it comes to mobility, we are powerless and only the privileged people with an effective booklet are those who can experience what moving freely around the world feels like. Passports had a very big impact on our society because they designed our “conditions of being, moving and residing in the world” as Mahmoud Keshavarz says out in his book The Design Politics of Passports. He also points out how “passports were the first material to control and prohibit movement.” The question to ask ourselves is: was it necessary to control bodies? How might the world be nowadays if borders didn’t exist, and people could mobilize anywhere they wanted? As I’ve said before, movement is in our DNA, we just want to move, somewhere, anywhere. So, would this have created more chaos? Are people just rushing to get places, competing among themselves to see who gets there first and jump to the top of the pyramid? Would some countries be abandoned due to their lack of resources and opportunities and other countries would be overpopulated for the same reasons? Would having no borders and no control over bodies create more oppressive ‘isms’ that Joanna Boehnert and Dimeji Onafuwa talk about in Design as Symbolic Violence? Or would these be abolished instead? Is movement a good thing or a bad thing?
Asking myself these questions, I recognize that sometimes movement can lead to disorder in society. Therefore, it is important for us as human beings to control our voluntary movements and just stop for a moment. I am a true believer that COVID-19 appeared as a form of Earth’s revelation that we needed to pause life for a while – that the planet is overexploited and is sick of all the political, cultural, and economic activity that we constantly nurture. We have treated the environment so poorly and so violently that we were forced to stay stationary and abandoned most of our daily activities for Earth to recover from us. The pandemic wasn’t just a wake-up call for us to build on compassion for others, but also to appreciate the place where we are now and accept the fact that there’s nowhere to go.
Now, I am not saying that people should not explore the world, I think travel is one of the most enriching and self-growing activities one can do as a human being. I am also not saying that if you are born in a country, you should stay there forever because I am actually living in a country that is not mine. What I am trying to reflect here is the importance of practicing stillness without worrying about the fast pace, always on the go, multitasking society. I want people to feel that it’s okay to do nothing and to break away from overworking, overdoing, overthinking. I also want to invite people to reflect on what drives them to move? Is it greediness, money, recognition? Or is it love, dreams, and personal growth?
-mo