The Friday Morning Pause

In this episode, The Friday Morning Pause: When My Brother’s Bookshelf Called Me to Stillness

We live in a world allergic to stillness. Our mornings begin mid-sprint—thumbs scrolling before our eyes even open. The impulse to jump into the digital chaos is immediate.

But sometimes, stillness finds you.

It was early Friday morning. We’d arrived late the night before, stepping into the cool air before the day turned hot. Half-awake, I reached for my phone—emails, headlines, social feeds waiting like a morning buffet of distraction.

We were in Cuba. No Wi-Fi. No 5G. No password. Just stillness, disguised as inconvenience.

Instead, I caught sight of something unexpected: a small stack of books on my brother’s TV shelf.

My brother and his wife are powered by perpetual motion. They are the definition of overscheduled and overstimulated. Yet there it was: Stillness Is the Key by Ryan Holiday, quietly mocking my scrolling habit. The irony was perfect.

I put my phone down—a small, deliberate act of rebellion—and picked up the book. Within minutes, Holiday’s message hit me hard: in a world addicted to noise, the key to thriving isn’t more motion—it’s the intentional ability to pause and achieve mental clarity.

We exhaust so much of our energy either replaying the past or fast-forwarding to the future. We chase fulfillment as if it’s hiding somewhere ahead, when, as Holiday writes, “There’s no greatness in the future. Or clarity. Or happiness. Or peace. There is only this moment”.

Stillness, as he describes it, isn’t laziness. It’s an active calm—a refusal to be dragged into external chaos, creating a necessary internal space where good ideas and clear thinking can actually show up.

That morning, my brother’s bookshelf forced me into that quiet space. I realized I was about to waste the start of a beautiful day scrolling through things I couldn’t control instead of focusing on the reality right in front of me.

Maybe you don’t have a bookshelf waiting to interrupt your morning. Perhaps you think you don’t have time for stillness, living life perpetually "On the Fly." But here is the truth: you have to carve it out.¹

The less energy we waste worrying about the future, the more energy we will have for what’s in front of us.

The key to living "On the Fly " isn’t speed—it’s direction. And direction starts with stillness.

I’m Patrick Ball. This is On the Fly. Stay curious. Be still. Ask questions. See you next time.

Comments

When Fear Becomes the Default

In this special episode, When Fear Becomes the Default. Early Sunday morning, I was cycling past a small veterans’ pocket park in San Marcos. The air was still, the streets nearly empty. On one corner stood a young woman, alone, holding a hand-painted sign that read: “Be ANGRY. ICE agents are murdering people.” I pedaled past, but the words stayed with me. I knew the context—the footage and headlines from Minneapolis the day before, already ricocheting through the country and hardening opinions. Even in the quiet of the ride, the noise followed. Two miles later, I stopped at a red light. A black car with dark windows pulled up inches from my bike. My heart jumped. My first instinct wasn’t neighbor —it was threat . I found myself bracing, scanning, and wondering if the person inside was angry, armed, or looking for trouble. Then the door opened. A well-dressed young woman stepped out, walked to the trunk, and pulled out a sign that read “Open House.” She turned, smiled brightly, and sa...

The Language of Home: Building a Sanctuary

This episode is for anyone trying to find their footing in a new place—whether it’s a new city, a new job, or a new country. The light in Florence, Italy, has a way of making everything feel like a Renaissance painting—the golden hue on the stone, the steady rhythm of the Arno River, and the feeling that you are walking through a history much larger than yourself. I was there to give a presentation to a class of Gemology students. I was prepared to discuss color grading and refractive indices, but not to be outed as a language tutor . Feeling very much like a guest in a storied land, a hand shot up enthusiastically. "You’re the guy on the podcasts," the young woman said, her eyes bright with recognition. "You’re the one teaching us English." I laughed nervously. If you know my flat Midwestern accent, you know the irony here. I am hardly an Oxford professor. But later, as I wandered the cobblestone streets beneath the shadow of the Duomo, the humor faded into a powe...

Practiced Hands: The 50-Year Warranty

What Doc Burch Taught Me About Staying Active. We talk a lot about "life hacks" these days, but most of them don’t have a very long shelf life. Usually, they’re forgotten by the next app update. But back in 1972, I received a piece of advice that came with a 50-year warranty. It’s the reason I’m still on my bike today, still chasing a golf ball around Carlsbad, and still—mostly—in one piece. The Kick That Changed Everything It started with a literal kick in the pants. A kid at school in Cuba, Illinois, was joking around and caught me just right. By the next morning, my lower back was screaming. My mom didn’t reach for the Tylenol; she reached for her car keys. "Let’s go see Doc Burch," she said. "He’ll fix you right up." Harry E. Burch, D.C., was a fixture in Lewistown. He’d graduated from Palmer College in ’59 and had been our family’s go-to for years. He was a man of practiced hands and steady eyes. After a quick exam and an X-ray, the mood in the room s...

Sweden Called . . . They Said No.

Have you ever wondered about the Nobel Prize? Let's look at Where Genius Meets “Wait—Where’s My Medal?” Every October, the Nobel Prizes are announced, and humanity pauses to celebrate the "greatest benefit to mankind." And every year, like clockwork, a specific type of person appears online to complain—at length—that they were robbed. (Well, maybe this year more than most.) The Origin: A Legacy of Guilt The prize exists because Alfred Nobel, a Swedish inventor, had a crisis of conscience. Nobel held 355 patents, but he was most famous for inventing dynamite. When a French newspaper mistakenly published his obituary, calling him the " Merchant of Death, " he decided to buy a better legacy. In his 1895 will, he left the bulk of his massive fortune to establish five prizes (Physics, Chemistry, Medicine, Literature, and Peace). Because he was Swedish, he entrusted the selection to Swedish institutions, such as the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. The only outlier...

On The Fly

Search This Blog