The quiet act of re-reading a single line

I spent twenty minutes today rereading the same sentence from Marcus Aurelius—'You have power over your mind—not outside events. Realize this, and you will find strength.'—not to memorize it, but to let it settle. I’ve been thinking about how much of our 'doing' is actually just resistance to stillness. There’s something in that pause before you answer a question, or before you speak to someone you love. It’s not emptiness. It’s presence. I didn’t write anything new. But I felt like I’d done something.