Hitting Pause

Now and again, I need to remind myself to hit pause. Stopping isn’t an option, not while there’s still time, but pausing is. There is something that happens to my brain on pause. It’s not a complete reset but it settles things. I like to walk away from problems for a bit in order to try solving them; you can only stare at a thing for so long. Even the simplest task requires a beat. I’m not chronically dyslexic but I can be going at such a speed that I turn things completely around in my head. The dishwasher has more than once become the fridge.

My dear friend A.I. says that the ‘stop theory’ originates from Dialectical Behavior Therapy, but when has he ever stopped? Or paused. A.I. can’t walk away from the problem the way I can (nor can he walk). It’s one of the many differences between us. He might come up with the answer more often, and always faster, but sometimes it’s better to sit with a question in my opinion. The moment of not knowing is a uniquely human moment. Yes, animals often don’t know, but they don’t know that they don’t, which is bliss. Humans will never experience that bliss, unless they spend time somewhere in Tibet with the right amount of incense.

When I am in the state of not knowing, I need to remind myself how human the moment is – and pause. This is when I see the landscape. This is when the perspective alters, and the world blurs a bit as I fiddle with the lens. Early on in my stage directing I would panic. I would try and compensate for not knowing by pretending to know, which was ludicrous and, quite frankly, transparent. I learned to ‘not know’ as a way of connecting with the other people in the room who also had no idea. I didn’t know, at the time, that this was pausing. I thought it was desperately trying to stay afloat. I needed to remind myself that I wasn’t in deep water, and I wasn’t going to drown.

Lately, when I get up in the morning, I like to sit at the edge of the bed for a moment before standing. Before my head is filled with things I didn’t know were there, memoranda. I know I’m going to stand, I know I’m going to push into the day headlong, getting things ‘done’ that will never be done, putting yogurt back in the oven and spoons somewhere I won’t remember. But for a moment, by the side of the bed, I remind myself that I am alive. The day has begun, and I can make the day what I want if I want. I can make choices if I step back and think about it; pause, not to examine but just to pause. I need to remind myself that I can’t do everything (or even anything) and I don’t know everything even if my friend A.I. does. I don’t need to know, not right away or not ever. I am free to think not just respond. Time is on my side while I still have it. So, what’s the rush? I’ll get to the end soon enough. And what will I say to myself then? “I had to hurry but I made it”?

Our TV remote has ‘pause’ button that is directly beneath the ‘mute’ button. Sometimes we’ll press one instead of the other. It’s interesting to observe, once we’ve noticed, that the story has quietly continued without us. We paused, but the show didn’t. Yes, we’ll have to rewind trying not to notice, in reverse, who got shot and why, but we have a whole new way of looking at things, now. The pause was worth it, even if it was ‘mute’. We have meta-perspective, we have disengagement. And, better yet, we have popcorn.