A Cup of Stillness in the Rush of Time

A Cup of Stillness in the Rush of Time

There are moments in life that ask for no witnesses, no grand celebrations, and no photographs to preserve them—only a soft silence, like dew resting on a blade of grass at dawn. Among all the memories strewn across the cobblestone path of my years, one such moment stands as my quiet favourite—a solitary encounter with dawn on a mist-wrapped morning.

It was neither an occasion nor an achievement. It was simply being—with the world, with the air, with time itself. The sun, still shy beneath the horizon, had begun to wash the eastern sky in a palette of prelude: a gradient of blues, greys and amber. I was seated on an old wooden bench, weather-worn and splintered, by the edge of a pond I had passed many times but rarely noticed. That morning, it was a mirror—still, knowing, and profound.

The trees stood like sages around it, draped in veils of fog, their reflections trembling ever so slightly in the water like dreams on the edge of awakening. A single crane glided low, its wings outstretched like a slow-moving thought. And in that crystalline stillness, something within me stilled too.

No urgency gnawed at me, no burden of identity weighed upon my shoulders. I wasn’t a designation, a pursuit, or a story. I was simply a presence—awake, aware, and at peace. And in that moment of perfect anonymity, I found something more real than recognition: a tender intimacy with existence itself.

Philosophers have long sought to define happiness. Some call it fulfilment; others, the absence of desire. But to me, that moment whispered another possibility—that happiness is not something we pursue, but something that quietly arrives when we stop running. It is not the crescendo of life’s orchestra, but the pause between notes, the silence that lends music its depth.

How often we overlook these unlabelled gifts! Like raindrops on an old windowpane or the scent of earth after a summer drizzle. Life, in its truest sense, is not a race to be won but a rhythm to be remembered. And sometimes, the most profound poetry is written not in words, but in the pauses between our breaths.

A Reflection in Verse

Beneath the sky’s half-open eye,
I met a world that did not try.
No ticking clock, no weight of name,
Just breath and breeze, both wild and tame.

A fleeting hush, a sacred balm,
The universe, at once, was calm.
And I, no longer man or feat,
Was but the morning—pure, complete.