Creating a Ripple Effect with Stillness

Today, I was introduced to a new vocabulary word: equanimity.
It is derived from the Latin term "æquanimitas": having an even mind.

The man who ignited this conversation with myself is contemporary horror author Thomas Ligotti, who said the following:

There seems to be an inborn drive in all human beings not to live in a steady emotional state, which would suggest that such a state is not tolerable to most people. Why else would someone succumb to the attractions of romantic love more than once? Didn't they learn their lesson the first time or the tenth time or the twentieth time? And it's the same old lesson: everything in this life - I repeat, everything - is more trouble than what it's worth. And simply being alive is the basic trouble. This is something that is more recognized in Eastern societies than in the West. There's a minor tradition in Greek philosophy that instructs us to seek a state of equanimity rather than one of ecstasy, but it never really caught on for obvious reasons. Buddhism advises its practitioners not to seek highs or lows but to follow a middle path to personal salvation from the painful cravings of the average sensual life, which is why it was pretty much reviled by the masses and mutated into forms more suited to human drives and desires. It seems evident that very few people can simply sit still. Children spin in circles until they collapse with dizziness.

Being in a psychological state of complete stability is something many people strive for.

We lose our stillness when raindrops fall and obnoxiously invade our pools of consciousness, and it creates a ripple effect when we expose those issues to others.

As a result, we experiment with different methods to re-create a different environment for ourselves.


We never actually wait for the ripples to fade. As a matter of fact, we do the exact opposite.

Instead, we "take action": driving our fists into the water with emotion, allowing people to jump in... etc.

All this splashing does is prevent you from going deeper and probably disallows you from seeing things at the surface level.

This is not to say that your thoughts, your feelings, and your companions don't matter; they most certainly do. However, you cannot see your reflection in water unless it is still.

Find stillness of mind... or stillness of heart; whichever you prefer to start with first.