Pause

That is all.

Pause   /pôz/
1 : to stop temporarily, especially due to uncertainty.
2 : to linger for a time.

I’ve been thinking a lot about pauses lately. Big ones though. Not those vital, bite-sized interruptions where you deliberately slow down for some predetermined period of time and retreat from the chorus of absolute assholes to escape the chaos of modern life. 

Those are important, but the variety of pause I’m writing about is not one you should—or even could—schedule on a calendar. It’s bigger than a few moments or a day or a month or even the whole year. If you were to try add it to your weekly planner you’d be hard pressed to list anything other than TBD as the end date. Because if you did, once that day arrived you’d feel the same urge to scratch through it as you would Go to the DMV.

For certain, micro-breaks are essential to our greater well-being. They are and have been proven time and again to make our lives better, richer, fuller, and more navigable in so many ways: enhanced creativity, improved relationships, healthier bodies, increased productivity. 

Of this I’m quite certain, since moving to Sicily I’ve become a much bigger believer in doing less (though I admit I could do better). In Jenny Odell’s book, How To Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy, the author blames our need to always be busy on a culture-created world of production, performance, and individual achievement. One that sacrifices community for a more fragmented modern life. 

“In a world that glorifies busyness and productivity,” she writes “doing nothing becomes a radical act of resistance and self-care.” But for whatever reasons, many of us—even those daring enough to defy societal expectation—don’t cut ourselves some slack and practice doing nothing, um, more often. Maybe it’s just too difficult to actually visualize what doing nothing should even look like. Maybe it feels too much like giving up.

I don’t know, but this particular hiatus I'm writing about is not that, so let's put it to bed by saying small pauses are vital and we must make time for them. Our future selves with thank us.

When the Volcano Blows

This other variety though feels less a by-product of communal erosion and more the upshot of a volcanic eruption. Which makes a lot of sense as every natural, fertile thing in the world, since the beginning of time, has been forged in the fire and ash of volcanoes. Why should humanity be any different? Thinking we stand above nature is what’s gotten us into the mess we’re in now.

As it is, we already use volatile names for similarly reactive events: Going nuclear. Blowing up my life. Playing the last card. Unleashing a storm.

Going ape.

Going berserk.

Going ballistic.

We're always, in some shape or form, going or wanting to go somewhere, but to where exactly uncertain and accompanied with little or no specific intent. Seeking change of some kind. What kind precisely is difficult to pin down. It's annihilation with all the uncertainty, but none (hopefully) of the utter despair and destruction.

Let's compare it to the unnaturally long pause you might give when responding to someone’s question. We are so conditioned to fill the silence, to keep things moving, to going somewhere, that allowing yourself a beat to deliberate is difficult. But it is also full of purpose. Of discomfort.

And has the potential to reshape the landscape entirely.

More on this in the next post, coming in the next few days, before we start our long walk to Santiago de Compostella. But I'd like you to think for now of the pause as you yourself might re-imagine your own life, especially if the life you have built is one that you love and are proud of. That is the pause I am feeling. An opportunity to silence the noise and refocus, revise.

What you find may not look so different on the other side. You might remain married, keep working, keep caring for those you love by doing something that you love, but not out of some sense of duty, but because we love the people in our lives and want to know better how to be with them in the world.

It’s an approach to life that doesn't involve blowing anything up and feels less like starting over than simply awakening to something new, something better.

Ci vediamo presto!

Other News:

I've been learning this song on guitar lately and thought I'd share the inspiration behind it.

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