CATEGORY: Stories That Left Their Mark

The Wisdom of Sitting Still

By August 2021, freedom had slowly begun to return to our cities. After months of lockdown, even a short walk to my neighborhood bookstore felt like a quiet celebration. I remember wandering through the aisles with an almost childlike anticipation. I wasn’t looking for a particular title. I was looking for that one book that, without even knowing it, had been waiting for me.

Somewhere among dozens of covers, my hand came to rest on one.

Live Like a Cat.

I picked it up. Flipped through its pages absentmindedly. Before I read the author’s name or even what the book was about, I opened to the very first page.

A story wasn’t waiting for me there.

A handful of words was.

Free. Calm. Curious. Observant. Optimistic. Persistent. Elegant. Quiet. Charismatic. Proud. Independent.

How strange…

Some of those words felt like old friends I had somehow forgotten. Others resembled women I had admired from afar. And a few of them—I’ll admit it—I longed to become. Not because those qualities were missing from me, but because I had never quite allowed them to step into the light.

I closed the book, held it in my hands for a few quiet seconds, and smiled.

I had no idea that this chance encounter would become a silent conversation with myself—a conversation that, five years later, still lives on in its underlined pages, its countless bookmarks, and the thoughts it continues to awaken.

I walked home holding the book as if it were something precious. I didn’t let time slip away. I didn’t make coffee. I didn’t tidy the house. Some encounters deserve to remain undisturbed, untouched by the ordinary distractions of everyday life.

I settled into my favorite armchair and began to read.

The pages turned softly, as though they knew the way better than I did. I never hurried them; they were the ones leading me. Then I arrived at a chapter whose title seemed so simple, so almost innocent, that I could never have imagined it would stay with me for years.

The Wisdom of the Cat.

And then I read:

”The wise sit upon the moon and gaze at the earth, just as a cat sits upon a rooftop, watching the moon.”

I sat perfectly still.

There are sentences we read, and then there are those that somehow read us back.

”This is it…” I whispered, almost to myself.

I want to become a wise rooftop cat.

Not another woman rushing endlessly through life, as though each day were nothing more than an endless list of obligations to be crossed off before nightfall. I wanted to learn how to climb onto my own rooftop, to let my feet remain still so that my gaze could wander farther, to watch my own life without constantly trying to outrun it, to inhabit that quiet freedom of spirit where haste falls silent and wisdom finally finds a place to rest.

Perhaps, I remember thinking, life is not always asking us to move faster. Perhaps, every now and then, all it asks for is a rooftop.

The deeper I disappeared into the pages of the book, the more another woman began to surface—a woman I had somehow never noticed before. An unfamiliar uneasiness settled over me. It wasn’t the cats that had unsettled me. It was myself. It was one of those rare moments when a book does not teach you something new; instead, it quietly compels you to face something you have spent years avoiding.

How had I been living all those years?

I began to look back on my own journey as though it belonged to someone else. It was as if I had taken a step back and found myself watching a woman who was always in motion—always rushing to catch up, to take care of others, to explain, to forgive, to endure, to be there. Always there. For everyone else. For their needs. For their expectations. And the longer I watched her, the more clearly I realized that she resembled a loyal dog far more than she did a cat.

I never meant that as criticism. I love dogs. I share my life with a wonderful one, and hardly a day goes by without being moved by his unwavering devotion. But in that moment I wasn’t thinking about an animal. I was thinking about the part of myself that had learned to wait for a gentle touch, to tolerate a little more than it should, to keep returning even when it was exhausted, and to measure its worth by how much it was willing to give.

That was when I understood that my real question had never been whether I wanted to become like the cat. It was why I had spent so many years living so far away from her.

When had I started believing that kindness meant having no boundaries? When had I confused love with constant availability? And, perhaps most of all, when had I stopped climbing onto my own rooftop to look at my life from above, allowing it, if only for a little while, to unfold without me?

The days drifted by with the turning of the pages, and without quite realizing it, I had begun to read less of the book and more of myself.

It was not a comfortable journey. Every chapter seemed to shift the angle of a mirror. I thought I was following the life of a cat, only to find myself staring into my own.

Again and again, I wandered back through the years, standing before people, conversations, and silences I had long believed were safely behind me. I did not revisit them to justify them, nor to condemn them. I looked at them as though they belonged to another woman. And with an unexpected tenderness, I found myself wondering what might have happened if that woman had borrowed, if only for a fleeting moment, the gaze of that wonderfully aloof cat. What if, like her, I had simply flicked my tail, stretched without apology, and walked away? Not out of anger. Not out of pride. But because I understood that there are moments when the wisest response is not to stay and persist, but to leave with the same quiet ease with which the wind changes direction.

The longer I lingered in those thoughts, the more I realized that the book had become an invitation to look inward. It led me back to earlier versions of myself—not to accuse them, but to understand them. And perhaps that is the greatest gift a book can offer. Not to teach us a new way of living, but to give us the courage to look again, with gentler eyes, at the life we have already lived.

Five years have passed, and the book is still filled with bookmarks, underlined passages, and notes scribbled in the margins. I do not know whether I ever became the wise rooftop cat I dreamed of being that summer. But I do know this: whenever life begins pulling me into its relentless pace, faster than my soul can comfortably follow, I remember that cat sitting quietly on the rooftop.

And then, if only for a moment, I stop.

I watch.

I breathe.

And I try to see the world a little more like a cat… and a little less like the loyal dog I once was.