Take Time to Pause…
In today’s hectic world it can be hard to take time to pause. But pausing is important, according to Rollo May in Freedom and Destiny. Why? May says it’s because the rigid chain of cause and effect are broken by the pause. Response is no longer blindly following stimulus. Instead time has been made for human imagining, reflection, consideration and pondering. When we don’t pause we are constantly running from one thing to another—a state in which many people live today and which is inculcated in our children by overscheduling them. Why is this a bad thing? May says we lose touch with wonder, and we are no longer in communication with our destiny.May says that John Cage, a composer known for originality, once gave a concert in New York where he came out and sat down at the keyboard for a period of time without playing a note. The audience was not happy, but his aim, he explained, was to give them an opportunity to listen to the silence. Cage’s music is filled with long pauses, which sharpens the listener’s awareness—making the person’s senses keener.
If your life is filled with running from one thing to another, maybe it’s time to pause—so you can hear the beat of your own life once again.