A pause and landing place

The pace of life today can feel, at times, chaotic and unrelenting.

There's always something to see, do, remember, prepare for, attend to. When one responsibility is taken care of, another swiftly takes its place.

That feeling and rhythm of life might seem modern, but it isn't.

In February 1841, Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote in his journal:

If the world would only wait one moment, if a day could now & then be intercalated which should be no time but pause & landing place, a vacation during which sun & star, old age & decay, debts & interest of money, claims & duties should all intermit & be suspended for the halcyon trance, so that poor man & woman could throw off the harness & take a long breath & consider what was to be done without being fretted by the knowledge that new duties are gathering for them in the moment when they are considering the too much accumulated old duties.

Nearly two centuries later, the exhaustion in that passage is still palpable.

Emerson is asking for a feeling many people know well: the desire for a moment when nothing new is asked of us.

We're looking for a pause, or as Emerson puts it, a "landing place" where accumulation, in all its forms, takes a momentary break.

"But this on, on, forever onward wears out adamant," Emerson continues. "All families live in a perpetual hurry. Every rational thing gets still postponed and is at last slurred & ill done or huddled out of sight & memory."

Emerson’s point feels as relevant now as it did then. This sense of life wearing away in perpetual hurry isn't new, then, though today’s technology and constant expectations of participation have likely intensified it.

Often, I find myself hurrying from one task to another, forgetting to stay unrushed and present enough to enjoy and take in what I'm actually doing. At a recent visit to the Museum of Modern Art, my family and I were so caught up in the crowd swarming Vincent van Gogh's The Starry Night that we didn't even take a prolonged moment to sit and just look at it.

The rush to capture a photo of the painting overshadowed the experience of sitting there, looking, and being in the presence of the art.

Thoreau recognized this problem of rushing endlessly from one thing to the next.

"Our life is frittered away by detail," he writes in Walden.

The challenge is that our attention is finite and easily scattered. Even with the best intentions, it's hard to stay fully present for moments, events, and conversations when so many other things are waiting to claim our awareness.

For better or worse, the world will not give us the space Emerson asked for. Instead of waiting for those pauses, we must make them ourselves.

These will never be full, entire days outside of time and space. Maybe they're a few minutes here and there: the first quiet moments of the morning, an afternoon walk with no phone. Maybe it's just a long, deep breath.

Whatever form they take, I think we have to build these landing places into our lives deliberately, and treat them not as something we do if or when time allows, but as something we routinely make time for.

This all seems simple and easy, but if we don't intentionally make it part of our routines, it's easy to forget or put off.

The world will not slow down for us, and something, somewhere, will always be asking for our attention. But now and then, we can step out of the current long enough to take a deep, unhurried breath and remember where we are.

We can make a small landing place in the middle of an ordinary day: a moment when we are neither catching up nor falling behind, but simply present, wherever and whenever we are.

Consider: Where in your days do you feel most hurried or divided? Where can you carve out a few minutes, a pause or landing place, that asks nothing of you except being present?

Last week: The work worth doing