When The Soul
Finds Rest
by: Ulysses Ybiernas ♦ February 7, 2014
A deeply reflective piece about finding unexpected peace in a busy work environment, contrasting stress and silence, and rediscovering calm, gratitude, and inner stillness.
At precisely 12:10 p.m., the clock on my desk glows with a faint, steady light, and subtly different. It marks the moment that my workplace has finally learned to be still.
Not long ago, this same space was unrecognizable. There were customers upon customers, noise upon noise, urgency layered upon urgency, a restless storm that never quite knew when to end. Phone calls cut through conversations with clients, while hurried footsteps and interruptions broke the flow of work, trying to beat cut-offs. It felt as though thoughts were arriving faster than they could be held.
And then, just like that, it changes.
This place is strange that way, like a living contradiction. One moment it is like a tempest, all motion and pressure and noise. The next, it collapses into silence so sudden it almost feels unnatural, as if the world has paused mid-breath. And I am left standing in the gap between both states, learning again how to simply exist.
Now, in this unexpected calm, I feel something I did not anticipate: a sense of ease and serenity of spirit.
It is not loud. It does not announce itself. It simply settles, quietly, like dust finally coming to rest. Even the air-conditioning, sharp and biting against the skin, cannot disturb it. Instead, it stirs something familiar: an old sensation buried beneath years of overindulgence in work routines and duties. A trace of youth. Of simpler afternoons. Of moments when time did not feel like something to outrun.
The air now does not feel dry or weary. It feels almost gentle, as if humming a forgotten lullaby meant only for those still enough to listen.
And I find myself wondering: what if this is what living is really meant to feel like?
Not the endless pursuit. Not the constant accumulation. Not the chasing of names, titles, or milestones that always seem to recede just as we approach them.
But this.
This quiet, unclaimed moment asks nothing of me except presence. It is a kind of peace in which everything else seems to dissolve into thin air. Wealth, struggle, status, recognition, even lack, feel strangely distant, almost irrelevant, as though they belong to another dimension entirely, one I no longer need to consider.
In this stillness, something softens inside me.
The weight I didn’t realize I was holding begins to loosen. And for a brief, sacred moment, there is no performance required, no role to fulfill, no expectation to meet. Only breath. Only awareness. Only being.
It feels like standing at the edge of something vast and unseen, not fearfully, but gently. As if the soul itself is remembering where it came from.
And in that remembering, there is a quiet surrender, not to emptiness, but to something fuller than words can hold. A presence that does not demand explanation. A peace that does not need permission to exist.
And here, in this ordinary hour suspended between tasks and time, I begin to understand what that might mean.
Because even in a place measured by clocks and time, there are moments when something greater breaks through. Not loudly. Not dramatically. But gently enough that you almost miss it, if you are not paying attention.
And perhaps that is the quiet truth of it all:
That life, in its deepest sense, is not only found in movement…
but also in the sacredness of stillness, in the total absence of rush.
"The presence of God calms the soul, and gives it quiet and repose."
- Francois Fenelonn© 2016 ET PLUS . articles · All Rights Reserved | My Office Diaries