Slow, quiet, small

reflections from vacation

I’ve been saying yes for about a year now–to new projects, opportunities, and big dreams no matter how unqualified or intimidated they made me feel. I started a new teaching job, OCD coaching, a church leadership position, tutoring, a new instagram account, this Substack, a peer support certification training, among other endeavors. For so long, I let fear and OCD dictate my no’s; I’ve overcorrected to yes’es.  

I am tired. 

I am torn. 

I am tangled in to-dos and to-think-throughs and to-figure-outs. 

My family and I just returned from a two-week vacation driving from San Diego to Coeur D’Alene, Idaho to visit dear friends. The first five or so days of our trip I felt that gnawing pit in my stomach, that itch in my brain, that I-should-be-doing-something-else feeling. 

I felt like a failure. I was failing to relax, to be present, to truly rest on vacation. 

I was so mad that OCD showed up. 

Until I remembered some advice I’d been given about letting OCD tag along. 

What if that pit in my stomach, the nagging itch that something is incomplete, unfinished, and unresolved is not a sign of failure but a sign of success? A sign that I’m living my life in a way that makes OCD mad? 

What if I just let the feeling be? Protect the moment, not my peace. Let the moment be the moment, boredom, anxiety, and all? 

Admittedly, this was much easier with apps deleted off my phone, and life and deadlines on hold. But also, my brain is the type that fills the vacuum. When one task is completed, it frantically searches for the next. 

Yes, being present was easier on vacation, but I also want to acknowledge this as a monumental win for me. 

In addition to making amazing memories with my family, vacation also gave me ample opportunities to practice coming back to the moment with mindfulness (a term I usually balk at, but somehow seems fitting here). 

If OCD screams NOW LOUD BIG, mindfulness whispers slow, quiet, small. 

Yes, but have you thought about checking your email to see about that copywriting proposal? What about your fall schedule or daughter’s new school orientation? Just wondering if the air conditioning repair got scheduled? 

I feel the nagging drive to do more, to solve more. 

What else can I notice? What else can I feel? In a thought loop of yes, but can I shift to and also? 

I hear the inner critic, I acknowledge the taunts of OCD, and also I soak in the beauty of a blue-green lake that ripples into a shoreline of pine trees that scrape the sky. I delight in the warm comfort and easy conversation of being with friends who we’ve known for ages. I note the tenor of my kids’ little voices, the freckles spattered across his face, the way she hums and twirls and talks to herself for hours. I dip into boredom and daydreams. I can’t help but smile when my husband returns from paddleboarding, a boyish grin lighting up his vacation-scruffed face. 

I could share 100 slow, quiet, small moments from our trip. I’ll share three. 

Slow

Slow is the pace of a car ride border to border–San Diego to almost Canada. 

Minutes tick by like the pointed fence poles we pass. San Diego’s gentle scrubland mountains yield to the jagged, treeless cliffs of Nevada and Utah. Lightning pulses and rain drops splash.  Montana brings golden meadows dotted with round, bushy trees. Up, up, up in Idaho the treescape thickens until we’re winding between walls of pines. 

Seated together in the middle row of the minivan, my daughter traces my hand with her fingers. She gently caresses my pointer finger, up and back. Then my middle, up and back. When she gets to my ring finger, she lingers on the diamond ring passed down from my grandmother, she twirls the sparkling circle round and round the space below my freckled knuckle. She bends and straightens my pinky, open close, open close. 

Minutes tick by. 

Quiet

Quiet is a phone tucked into a wagon pocket on the shore and forgotten. Quiet is the plunk of a paddle stroking the water, smooth and dark. Quiet is the thump thump of my heartbeat, the whooshing of breath in and out of lungs, the lapping of waves against the paddleboard. 

Quiet is my daughter tummy down on the board, buns clenched, trusting me to bring her back to safety. 

Small

Small is standing on the edge of a rock cliff, peering down at the water ten, fifteen, twenty feet below and feeling a quake and quiver in my own body. Small is admitting I need accountability. 

“Let’s go together,” I suggest. 

“Three…two…one…go!” he yells and I’m trailing after him, a half-second behind, limbs flailing. 

Small is freefalling only to be smacked and swallowed by the cold, deep water. Small is coming up for air. Small is turning on my back, feet poking up from the waves, letting myself be buoyed. 

****

The paradox of OCD and anxiety is that what feels so big and urgent actually makes my life, my moments, small. 

When I slow down, let the moment be small, resist the urge to solve the big picture and prove my productivity, my world expands, possibilities appear, life is somehow bigger. 

Trees and miles and moments blur. I feel the familiar creep of “what else should I be doing?” “How can I maximize this car ride?”

A phrase bubbles up. “This is it.” This moment. At first, I’m disappointed, my shoulders slump. This mundane and unproductive moment, bordering on boredom—this is really it? 

A heartbeat later, the disappointment yields to wonder. 

This is it. 

Do I waste and reject the moment? Solve my way out of it? Distract with to-dos? Or do I let the moment be the moment–slow, quiet, and small? 

The trees blur by and my daughter reaches for my hand. I delight in the smallness of her brown, lean fingers, the fleeting babyness of her dimpled knuckles, the tenderness of her touch. 

I am not torn. I am here. 

Which is actually pretty big. 

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I’m back at home with a task list a mile long and an impending new school year and first days/weeks for three out of the four of us. Outside of vacation, I don’t feel like I have the luxury of slow, quiet, small. 

The needs are fast and loud and never-ending. 

Yet, I still want to choose the reality of the moment–this moment–over the false projects of dissecting the past or solving the future. 

This moment is it, and I’m tenderly trying to let it be slow, quiet, small.

***

What about you? How do you practice mindfulness or letting the moment be the moment?