The Power of Simple Stillness
The first time I read Robert Frost’s Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening, I was struck by its quietness. The narrator pauses in a snow-laden forest, caught between obligations and the allure of stillness. “The woods are lovely, dark, and deep,” Frost writes, encapsulating the tension in each of us between longing for rest and a moment of simple peace and the pull of responsibility. Decades after the poem was first published, its sentiment resonates deeply in a world that rarely allows us to even think about pausing, let alone actually doing so.
This morning, I found myself in a modern-day version of Frost’s woods—not a forest but a coffee shop, not snowy silence but the hum of espresso machines and not-so-muffled conversations. My laptop buzzed with emails, and my to-do list felt endless. I had just responded to my third text message. I was supposed to be working, yet somehow, almost subconsciously, I looked up.
Through the window, I noticed an older gentleman walking his dog in the small park across the street. A dusting of snow had arrived overnight that was quickly melting in the morning sunlight. The man moved slowly, pausing frequently to let his dog sniff at the base of a tree and the tufts of grass through what remained of the already melting snowflakes. The scene was not extraordinary. It was mundane. Yet for me it held a quietness that demanded my attention. For a few moments, I set aside my tasks and simply watched.
“The woods are lovely, dark and deep…”
In that pause, Frost’s words came back to me. Like his narrator, I felt the pull of a moment that seemed outside of time—an opportunity to pause, reflect, and simply be. The man and his dog were, in their way, embodying the same kind of presence Frost found in those woods. They were unconcerned with productivity, appointments, or deadlines. They were immersed simply and profoundly in the now.
Of course, like Frost’s narrator, I couldn’t stay forever. The “promises to keep” waited for me—emails to send, projects to finish, errands to run, place to be, texts to send. But I carried the profoundness of that moment with me. It reminded me that even in our busiest moments, we can—we must—find opportunities to pause, to appreciate, to connect, to be still with something larger than ourselves.
Frost’s woods are not, of course, a physical place; they are a state of mind. They remind us that amidst the demands of “living,” the simplest moments of stillness can be life-giving. And while we must eventually continue on, those moments have the ability to stay with us, illuminating our path as we keep our promises and continue our journey.
