In 2010 at New York’s Museum of Modern Art, the artist Marina Abramović turned stillness into a feat of endurance. For 750 hours across 79 days, she sat, still and silent and fully present in each moment. She shared her stillness with the more than fifteen hundred strangers who came to visit her.
Hour after hour, day after day, people came. Each time, she took a moment to look down, collected herself, and then looked at her new visitor. She knew that it would instantly be clear to the person opposite her if she started daydreaming or exhibited fatigue or boredom, and so she focused solely on the present moment.
Visitors who sat across from Abramović found the experience powerful. Some cried because it’s so rare simply to experience another person so fully and completely present.
That’s because today, we’re mostly trying to get out of the moment. Instead of simply enjoying a beautiful sunset, we take a photo of it. Or if we ever have a quiet evening at home, our minds race through lists of things that need doing. Standing in line to see Marina Abramović, we check our phones.
It’s no wonder that we struggle to be present, when we’re constantly bombarded by information. We feel an urgent need to stay on top of that information, reading every email, checking the news multiple times a day and seeing real-time updates from our friends’ lives on social media.
What we should do instead is take a life lesson from Napoleon. The great general deliberately delayed responding to correspondence. His secretary was told to wait three full weeks before opening any letter. When he finally heard what had been written, Napoleon enjoyed noting how often the supposedly urgent issue had simply sorted itself out.
That’s not to say that Napoleon was negligent. Far from it. But he had the wisdom to select and limit his inputs. His messengers were told never to rouse him from sleep with good news, which could wait. But bad news required an instant wake-up call. For then, Napoleon said, there’s no time to lose.
So build up some discipline. Use “Do not disturb” to block calls. Divert emails to subfolders. Unfriend toxic people who bring unnecessary drama to your life. Embrace a more philosophical, long-term perspective, rather than following the world’s events second by second.
Block out the endless inputs, the noise of the world, and you’ll find stillness.
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