A Pause

This Saturday straddles the holidays Christmas and New Year’s, a time washed with good will and optimism. Each holiday alone offers a topic relevant and pertinent in today’s world. I could talk about my gratitude for having close friends, or I could focus on the excitement of going into the year ahead. But I have nothing new to say about either one. Instead a friend and I talked this week about the word pause, and that’s the subject that feels most appropriate for me at this time.

We rush headlong from one activity to the next, some of us weary and some of us energized by how much we can get accomplish and what the season holds. I could do that but instead I want to take this time of being neither here nor there to step back and pause, to take a break thoughtfully, not because I feel I need it or want it. I’m taking a break, pausing, because this is something to treasure—a moment when I don’t have to move forward or back, rush ahead or finish up something left behind me, to clear my desk before covering it with the next task.

This isn’t as far removed from a writing life as one might think. Whenever I finish a story or novel I set it aside and stop thinking about it. This gives us as writers distance on our work, so we can come to it with a fresh pair of eyes after three or four weeks (or even a year). But it can do more than that.

A pause in the work of creating something, a season, or any time of year, gives me an opportunity to come back to myself, to step away from the person whom I created in order to write the story, call her the narrator or protagonist or something else. Or in my day to day life, the person who gets things done, checking each item off on a real or imagined to-do list.

A pause allows, even encourages me to step into another space, one that is walled off from the world in motion and complete in itself. This is not a moment of purpose, to wind down, lower my blood pressure or find the time to assess my upcoming tasks. The pause is its own purpose, to listen to random thought, to discover once again what it is to just be, to exist, to watch the world go by, to slow down enough to notice the world is going by, ever moving around us.

Perhaps this pause is a meditation without the Buddhist directive to “empty the mind,” ignore thoughts or feelings and keep the mind blank. My pause is a long moment to heighten the awareness that I exist. I am here in this place, touching the fabric of the seat of my desk chair, studying the color of the dyed leather desk top, hearing the occasional car pass my window.

When my mind tells me this moment has passed I know the lights will be brighter, the music will be sweeter, and I will enjoy them all more deeply. But I will also linger in the moment more often, knowing that life is truer when savored than gulped greedily. This weekend I straddle the holidays that define our year, and find a moment that is more, that is all of life held lightly in the palm, awakening me to all that is beyond accomplishment, goals, appearances, rushing thoughts. My moment as me entirely with the Universe sitting within my half-curled fingers.