And We Must Be Content With Stillness

Unwind this evening with this short guided mindfulness meditation And We Must Be Content With Stillness, featuring the Charles Tomlinson poem Farewell to Van Gogh. 

Being mindful entails practicing being present and nonjudgemental, and when you commit to a regular mindfulness practice you strengthen your skills and ability to calm and center yourself in the face of life's challenges. Schedule a free thrive wellness coaching session to learn more about working with a wellness coach to develop a mindfulness practice. 

Farewell to Van Gogh

The quiet deepens. You will not persuade 

One leaf of the accomplished, steady, darling 

Chestnut-tower to displace itself

With more of violence than the air supplies

When, gathering dusk, the pond brims evenly 

And we must be content with stillness.

Unhastening, daylight withdraws from us its shapes 

Into their central calm. Stone by stone

Your rhetoric is dispersed until the earth 

Becomes once more the earth, the leaves

A sharp partition against cooling blue.

Farewell, and for your instructive frenzy 

Gratitude. The world does not end tonight

And the fruit that we shall pick tomorrow 

Await us, weighing the unstripped bough.


Charles Tomlinson 1960