I’ve written a lot on this blog about stagnation and how awful it feels to be stuck, yet I’ve never tackled the opposite. Perhaps because the opposite of stagnation – motion – is something we don’t get the chance to examine as much. When life is in motion, there isn’t much time for sitting around and thinking about it.

As a woman in her late twenties, there have been just as many periods of motion as there have been stagnancy in my life so far – not that you’d ever know from reading this blog, or my journals or even speaking to me in person.

It’s the slow times, the quiet moments, when I get introspective and open up about my circumstances. Motion tends to just happen and it’s only when the whole thing is over do I consider the events and how I’m feeling now afterwards.

While periods of stagnancy and quiet allow for this introspection, the fast periods shouldn’t be ignored completely.

I think in general we see more beauty in stagnancy and stillness. I’m talking of everything from the quiet moments in life – relaxing on the beach with your airport book after months of saving for the trip away – to even physical beauty and art. After all, some of the most beautiful and widely regarded pieces of art are images; still images.

When things are still they’re easier to capture; the camera roll of blurred images tells us that. And I guess that also applies to beauty. When it is still, it’s obvious.

Motion make things difficult to see clearly.

Like it is only when life has slowed down do we have the time and space to think about our circumstances, so maybe beauty is the same way.

We only see beauty when it is sat still in front of us, simply because we have the time to do so. We have gotten so used to expecting to see one form of beauty, and that form is always still, obvious, easy to absorb – like life when things have stopped happening to us.

This is the way we have operated for so many years, and we continue to rely on stillness in order to see clearly. Only once something is still can we see it for what it really is and determine whether it is beautiful or not.

From art galleries to Instagram photos, it seems so easy to capture beautiful things and keep them in a frame.

But what about the things that aren’t still?

What about the moments of life when everything is moving forwards, when things are finally coming into fruition that you’d long since considered pipe dreams? or your best friend is dancing in the nightclub, hair wild and mouth wide as she can’t contain her joy? or the toddler, high on their first steps, is running away from their parent ,screaming with laughter, as they try to catch a bubble or butterfly or floating petal?

There are countless other active moments in our life that I could have mentioned here, when people and things are in motion and yet are more beautiful than anything you’ve seen hung in a gallery or liked on social media. But I don’t have the imagination or space to do so.

Instead I hope these examples of sufficient and let you see where I’m trying to go with this.

This is not a chat about physical appearance, but it also could be. After all beauty can take many forms, and one that we are most familiar with is physical appearance. But that is not to say that it is the only form of beauty that applies when we talk about motion, as so many things can be more beautiful (if not, just as beautiful) when they are moving.

This is a small think-piece, a silly journal entry, for me to explore these ideas about beauty and how there isn’t just one way to look at things. It’s a pretty obvious concept – it reeks of a teenage desperation for independence through any means necessary – but I needed the reminder. So maybe I’m not the only one.

I guess in summary, there isn’t only one way for beauty to thrive or things to happen. There isn’t only one way to process things or one way to be pretty or one way to achieve success; there truly isn’t.

There’s little reminders everywhere to get out of the way – ‘you’re blocking the view’ – and this post is my attempt to stop blocking my own view.

Speak soon,

Rachael.