This Just In: People Sit Still
- paigedoughty
- 2 days ago
- 4 min read
This is part three of my series Consciously Engaging with the News (and Our Lives)
When things speed up on the outside, we slow down—or get present—on the inside.
As a person who grew up with climate change, I’ve been waiting for the moment when climate change and the collapse of our systems would arrive. I first learned about “global warming” in middle school, and I remember very vividly taking the fastest showers I possibly could, hoping to save water.
Since that twelve-year-old self trying to save the planet with military-style showers, things have heated up a bit—both literally and metaphorically.
At some point in the last five years, a strangely relieving thought came to me:
Oh. I can’t stop climate change. It’s already here.
And it was interesting, because it felt like a huge weight lifted off my shoulders. Instead of trying to prevent some future catastrophe in a constant emergency mindset, I could begin responding to what was actually happening now—in an everyday way.
When I studied environmental education in graduate school, I had the opportunity to experience communities and ecosystems that were already in crisis. Sometimes that crisis was related directly to climate change, but it was always related to human development and the ways we encroach on ecosystems and, often, Indigenous ways of life.
When I studied environmental education in graduate school, I had the opportunity to experience communities and ecosystems that were already in crisis. Sometimes that crisis was related directly to climate change, but it was always related to human development and the ways we encroach on ecosystems and, often, Indigenous ways of life.
It was a remarkable program. We lived and learned outdoors and met directly with the communities we were studying rather than only reading about them in books. But even that graduate program was twenty years ago now.
And here we still are.
What I know deep in my bones is that external events are not slowing down. More and more things are happening in our world, and we have more and more access to information about them.
If you’ve read my previous newsletters, you know I’ve been writing about how to consciously engage with information and the news.
But the most important thing my graduate studies—and my lived experience since—have taught me is this:
The twelve-year-old trying to fix the world had something backwards: We cannot fix the world “out there,” if we are not already calm and present “in here.”
We are a brief moment in the timeline of planet Earth—a breath and an exhale, the beginning of a sigh—as I wrote in my birthday letter to myself this year.
I had to spend decades trying to fix the world before realizing something:
It cannot be fixed.
Because it has never been broken. Or it is only broken when we cannot connect with the subtle calm field of awareness that we are underneath all the noise. And it is only from here, from this Presence, that true lasting change can be affected. It’s a shift in perspective and it is everything.
So if you are reading headlines or having conversations that constantly disturb you, it becomes essential to use the tools that keep that disturbance from taking over your everyday life.
If you walk out the door each morning believing everything is broken and wrong, your day will unfold very differently than if you walk out the door knowing—deep down—that All is well…More well than you could dare to dream or imagine.
That phrase comes from one of my favorite spiritual teachers, Adyashanti.
This perspective invites us to lean into possibility—to remain curious about what might unfold depending on how we choose to show up each day, each moment, and most importantly from where. From our own disturbance or from our own within-ness.
After decades of trying to fix the world—and even building a career around helping people reconnect with the natural world and with one another (which I still deeply believe in and care about)—I’ve learned something simple and profound.
The most important headline might be this:
This just in. People Sit Still.
All over the globe, people have stopped doing things for a moment. They have radically surrendered to their own presence and are wearing out the patterns of doing and fixing—doing and fixing—over and over again.
The article that follows might read something like this:
A quiet turning inward is happening all over the planet.
A grounding. A coming to peace and presence.
And it is changing the course of human history—through the evolution of human consciousness people are waking up to their own inner peace and oneness and changing the trajectory of humanity on Earth.
Want to Sit Still With Me?
If you’re looking for a place to begin, or find your way back to yourself, my guided meditations offer a gentle space to slow down, reconnect, and listen inward.
I lead a Meditation Group every other Thursday, 7:00-8:30 in Gunbarrel. Each session includes a short meditation, a teaching and time to explore it together.
We’re a small group, looking for dedicated members to commit to the practice and to each other. If you’re interested, email me at paige@paigedoughty.com or text me at 303-518-4010. Full details here.
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