In our world, which is obsessed with urgency, novelty, and noise, there’s a quiet rebellion in slowing down and letting the ordinary be enough.
Not everything needs to be shared, optimised, or explained. Some moments, a coffee, a quiet room, the way the light lands on the wall, ask only to be noticed. These are sacred ordinary things: they don’t announce themselves, but they are a truth that cannot be found in achievement or spectacle.
I’ve come to realise that protecting this quiet ordinariness is not about withdrawal. It’s about care for attention, for inner space, for the kind of life that makes room for soul. So much of our culture is built on interruption; notifications, conversations we didn’t choose, apps we didn’t even know we wanted let alone open.
Our minds fragment. Our attention smashed into a millions pieces.
Peace doesn’t arrive through force but when we make space for it — in silence, in solitude, in moments of nothing happening when we simply allow it to breathe into life.
This is why I play gongs.
It’s not to entertain, not to perform, but to create a space where people can remember their own depth. The resonance invites stillness, not just in the room, but in the body, in the breath, in the mind. Each session is a kind of collective exhalation. A pause from doing. A return to simply being.
And it’s why I photograph the way I do, slowly, quietly, on film. Photography, for me, isn’t about “capturing” or “shooting” or “taking”. It’s about witnessing. A way of noticing the overlooked: shadows, textures, shapes, the quiet between things. To photograph like this is to protect the moment from being rushed past. To honour its right to just be.
I’m learning to live more like that, not just during a gong meditation or with my camera, but in the ordinary flow of an ordinary morning. I’m trying to move gently, to speak less, to clear space for what’s already here.
I often get this wrong and forget this. But as I get overwhelmed, impatient or irritated, I try and return to it. I remember that peace isn’t something to find, it’s something to stop interrupting.
Let the ordinary be enough.
