What it means to contemplate—and why you should

An everyday path to reconnecting with our inner and outer worlds.

Wanderer above the Sea of Fog by Caspar David Friedrich, 1818

Lately I’ve had the feeling that life has reached peak complexity: too much busyness, too many demands and decisions, too much craziness in the world, and way too much “content” fracturing my attention. Too much chaos, too little order.

I’ve been craving simplicity, slowing down, and sanity. I want to just be present: with myself, with the people I care about, and with the bigger questions and ideas that have been asking for my attention.

In that spirit, my intention for the summer is to slow down and create space for reading and contemplation. I got a head start the other day, when I found myself drawn to an old weathered copy of Gift from the Sea that I’d bought at an antique store years ago by a friend’s insistence but had never got around to reading.

I firmly believe that books are messengers—the right ones tend to come into our lives at just the right times—and picking it up felt kismet. Right away, I knew why I felt the pull.

Writing in 1955, Anne Morrow Lindbergh (the wife of famed aviator Charles Lindbergh) reflects on solitude and contemplation as a necessary part of a woman’s inner life and personal renewal. Inspired by her time alone by the sea, she finds that contemplation isn’t a luxury or a practice reserved for philosophers and mystics, but a vital part of a life well-lived. While the constant demands and distractions of our daily lives pull us away from our center and to “the periphery” of the Self, contemplation reconnects us with who we are and what is most essential.

The faster and more fragmented our lives become, the more we need the kind of stillness and solitude that naturally sparks contemplation. Alone in a cottage by the ocean, away from the demands of motherhood and housework, she is reminded of the inner posture required to listen deeply to ourselves:

“The sea does not reward those who are too anxious, too greedy, or too impatient. To dig for treasures shows not only impatience and greed, but lack of faith, Patience, patience, patience is what the sea teaches. Patience and faith. One should lie empty, open, choiceless as a beach—waiting for a gift from the sea.”

This empty, open inner space is, I think, what many of us are longing for. Because it’s in that receptive space that something of meaning and beauty—a gift from the deeper layers of the mind—might find its way into to our awareness.

What is contemplation?

If you’re a Hello, Mortal reader, you know that we talk a lot about contemplating mortality (it’s kinda our thing). But I realized I’ve never actually defined what it means to contemplate.

What are we doing when we contemplate something? How does it work? And most importantly, why should we do it?

Defined as “deep reflective thought” or “the action of looking thoughtfully at something for a long time,” I think of contemplation as the space between thinking and meditating—a quiet, spacious kind of wondering that invites something deeper to emerge. It’s willing to wait for insight; holding something with care and intention, it can reveal its shape to us in time.

Most fundamentally, to contemplate is be with something: an experience, a question, a problem, a memory, a work of art, a place.

Beloved spiritual leader Richard Rohr’s Center for Action and Contemplation describes contemplation as “the practice of being fully present—in heart, mind, and body—to what is in a way that allows you to creatively respond and work toward what could be.”

A practice of deep listening. It’s about going beyond information and advice, beyond others opinions, to find our own inner knowing. It’s how we learn from our experiences and grow from them, how we become more self-aware, how we see the invisible forces, the beliefs and assumptions and stories, that are guiding our behavior and our lives.

Contemplation could be prayer, meditation, journaling, walking in nature, or any practice that allows for deep listening. “In short, contemplation might be described as entering a deeper silence and letting go of our habitual thoughts, sensations, and feelings in order to connect to a truth greater than ourselves,” CAC writes.

This requires solitude and simplicity; a kind of solo retreat to the sea, whether actual or metaphorical. But contemplation is not always stillness. Sometimes we walk, write, or move with a question.

I once heard the yoga teacher Elena Brower say that she likes to brings a question onto her mat, and hold it gently as she’s moving through her yoga practice—not “thinking” about it, per se, but just allowing it to be there. By the end of her practice, she has often arrived at a new level of insight or perspective that had been eluding her.

In his wonderful little book The Art of Contemplation, spiritual teacher Richard Rudd (not to be confused with the aforementioned Richard Rohr) says that contemplation is a particularly powerful way of working through the challenges in our lives, not forcing an answer but allowing clarity to naturally emerge:

“‘You can think about the issue that you currently find most challenging in your life and make that the focus of your contemplation.

As you begin to wrap your head and heart around this challenge, and as long as you don’t pressure yourself in any way, your contemplation will begin to reveal it in a new light. Your mind will stop tensing up whenever you think of this issue, which means you will more easily be able to come to an inner or outer resolution. This technique is really about holding the problem gently inside yourself and simply breathing into it.”

For me, contemplation often begins with a question, word or feeling that won’t leave me alone. It creates a mild sense of irritation, a kind of inner tension, that forces me to sit with it, walk with it, and often, write about it. At some point, meaning clicks into place, and the tension releases. Until the next question arrives.

Contemplating death

Many wisdom traditions name death as the ultimate object of contemplation. In Buddhism, meditating on impermanence is known as “the supreme meditation”—the one that leads most directly to freedom.

We can’t intellectualize our way into a true understanding of the nature of impermanence and life’s finitude. Instead, we have to be with the truth that we are going to die one day. We have to sit with the reality that everything changes; that everything we love and care about will one day pass away.

In creating an open space to just be with the reality of death, we allow ourselves to be transformed by it.

This is a process that takes time. We may not get anywhere right away. But over time, as we contemplate death, we discover how we truly we want to live. As Steve Jobs said in his famous Stanford commencement speech: “Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the best tool I’ve found to help me make the big choices in life.”

How to contemplate

Here’s a simple practice to get you started:

1. Choose something that matters to you: a question, a challenge, a feeling, or even a single word that’s been lingering in your mind.

2. Set the intention to be with it. You don’t need to “figure it out.” Just hold it with curiosity.

3. Carve out space for quiet attention: go for a walk, sit in stillness, write in a journal, lie in bed without your phone. Let your mind circle around it.

4. Be gentle. Don’t force insight. Simply return to it over time, and notice what begins to shift or clarify.

Contemplation is a practice of listening, not for answers, but for deeper awareness. And from awareness, clarity tends to follow.

Tell us: what are you contemplating these days? Is contemplation something that you hope to carve out more space for? We’d love to hear from you ❤️