pause, choose — Katrina Kenison

Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom. ~ Viktor E. Frankl

Snow falls softly as I type these words. We’re in the hushed depths of a New Hampshire winter here, eagerly noting each extra minute of daylight, resisting the urge to count the days till spring, still a bit astonished by the way a few inches of fresh powder so completely transforms the world beyond our windows. After three days of a nasty cold, I’m grateful for each unimpeded breath, for an hour in which I haven’t had to reach for Kleenex, for the progress that allows me to be upright at the kitchen table this afternoon rather than collapsed amongst the bed pillows.

As always during the first weeks of a new year, and especially over the course of these quiet, quarantined sick days at home, I find myself taking stock, reflecting on the inevitable parade of losses that is part and parcel of being in one’s sixties. And, too, I continually bow to an abundance of blessings. Life is rather beautifully becalmed in our family at this moment, which feels like its own kind of grace.

And yet. (There is always an “and yet,” right?)

Every day I’m reminded how fragile life is, how it can (and will) turn in an instant. My parents are both in good health, but they are also in their eighties; we live, each of us, with a heightened awareness of today’s preciousness. Meanwhile, so much in our community, in our country, in our world is unraveling. This morning I filled the bird feeders, watched the juncos gather eagerly for their seedy breakfasts, came in and brewed strong coffee, then sat down with my bowl of fruit and yogurt to read about the death of a billion animals in Australia. Such is the moment in which we live.

While protestors throng the streets in Iran, a snowplow slowly scrapes a clear path along our quiet country road. As new reporting reveals that the Russians are already deeply engaged in schemes to hack our 2020 presidential election, a friend in town tries to raise a couple of thousand dollars to turn an abandoned Radio Shack storefront into a local office for Pete Buttigieg. I write a check then tear it up and write a new one, doubling the amount, as if a few extra dollars, desks, and chairs could possibly make a difference. But we must hope, and we must act as if each small act of goodness matters. Which of course it does.

In Washington this week, 99 senators took an oath to “uphold impartial justice” as the impeachment trial of Donald Trump got underway. I wonder what each of those men and women thought and felt as they signed their names. I wonder if they paused to consider the full weight of the promise they were making and of the power they hold in their hands. I wonder if they each took a moment there, pen in hand, to consider the stakes of the votes they will cast, not only for our country but for their own hearts and souls and consciences.

In the evening, making dinner, I vacillate between tuning in to the evening news, by turns heartbreaking and infuriating, or turning away from it all so I can savor the cozy silence of my kitchen as it fills with good smells.

And I struggle, daily, to negotiate the disparity between my own comfortable security in this moment and the profound suffering of so many others. I’m not alone in this. The ever-present themes of fear, anxiety, despair, anger, and exhaustion are woven through our family text threads, countless conversations with my friends, and probing op-ed essays in the newspaper. It seems as if we are all both overwhelmed and numbed, longing for change and, at the same time, desperate for guidance as to how to make sense of the world as it is.

I don’t have answers to any of the questions I’m wrestling with these days. I don’t understand how, as mothers and fathers and sisters and brothers, we can turn our backs on those who are struggling just to survive. Or how we as a country can treat any human being as if he or she is somehow “less than” or not deserving of the rights we take for granted. I don’t understand our collective failures of empathy and compassion, both for one another and for our beautiful, beleaguered, planet. I don’t understand how values we as Americans once honored and upheld together, values such as integrity and truthfulness and fairness, were subsumed into partisan politics and a fight for power at any cost. But I worry that bit by bit we’re losing our capacity to see each other and ourselves as holy and worthy and interconnected. I worry that both hope and outrage can easily crumble into pettiness and complacency. I worry that in my own small way, in my own small life, I’m part of the problem.

At the same time, I want to believe we’re better than this.

“Be the change you want to see in the world,” Gandhi said.

And so I begin with me. I want to believe I’m better than this. No, I want to be better than this.

On New Years Day, my son Henry, my soul daughter Lauren, and I sat in the living room tossing around possible words of intention for 2020. Lauren passed her 2019 word, “trust,” on to Henry, saying it had served her well. He took it. “I want you to give me a word,” she suggested, and I didn’t have to ponder long. On June 1 the job she’s held for 17 years is ending. Two weeks later, she’ll turn 40. To mark both the closing of one door and the opening of some new ones, she’ll spend a month traveling in Europe before embarking on her search for a new career. “Curiosity,” I offered after a brief deliberation, happy to launch her on these explorations with an open heart and mind.

I’d been thinking about my own intention for 2020 for a while, and over these last couple of weeks I’ve realized that the phrase I committed to on New Year’s Day is at once a clear instruction, a reliable road map and, for me, a constant challenge. If I were the tattooing type, I would surely have these two words inked permanently onto the inside of my wrist: “Pause, choose.”

I suspect we might all benefit from the powerful force for good that a simple pause can create. Most of us will readily admit that we’re moving too fast, reacting too hastily, doing too much, texting and scrolling and tweeting too often, feeling and reflecting and thinking too little.

When I think about being the change I want to see in the world, I realize that my own best self is never the one who reacts in the heat of the moment, leaping in with both feet, swinging for the fences, speaking or acting without weighing the consequences, or rushing on to the next thing without fully considering what would serve me right now.

My best self is not the one who leans on the horn when someone cuts her off in traffic, or who hurries, eyes cast down, past the homeless person asking for a handout on the street. My best self doesn’t lash out in quick anger, or fire off a text or an email when her feelings are hurt, or presume a friend’s silence is a condemnation. She’s not the aggrieved victim who bites back when her husband makes a comment that stings. My best self doesn’t sulk, or turn icy cold, when she’s teased or criticized. She’s not impatient with someone else’s foibles or shortcomings or mistakes. She’s not the mom who lectures her son on the phone, the friend who offers unsolicited advice, or the neighbor who spreads a juicy bit of gossip. My best self isn’t quick to judge or criticize or second guess.

Nor is my best self the woman who’s so eager to please others that she ignores her own wishes and needs. She’s not the silent martyr trying to smooth the way for everyone else while growing exhausted and resentful in the process. She’s not numbing her own feelings, or silently berating herself for this or that dumb thing, or allowing someone else’s choices to determine her own well-being and happiness. My best self is not the person who agrees to commitments she’ll later regret, or who says “yes” because it’s just too hard to say “no.” She’s not the one who stays silent in the face of cruelty or injustice, or who fails to stand her ground for fear of being judged herself.

That impulsive, impatient, critical, overly sensitive, somewhat frightened, people-pleasing self is definitely part of who I am, though. And she’s the one I’m taking by the hand this year. I’m asking her to pause, multiple times a day, and to pay attention to what’s actually happening and how she’s actually feeling. And then I’m asking her to choose how she responds to life as it is in this moment, not from fear but from love.

Pause, choose. If I do it often enough, it’s bound to become a habit.

I believe that at the heart of many of the atrocities we see around us is a failure of compassion, a failure of empathy, a rush to judge and a haste to act. Cruelty toward one another and disregard for the earth itself comes from the loss of our imaginative capacity to recognize that we are all interconnected, that we are all holy, that we are all struggling, and that we are all one. When our capacity for compassion isn’t nurtured, when our sense of awe and interdependence and connection breaks down, when we distance ourselves from nature and divide ourselves into “us” and “them,” then hatred and violence become normalized.

I cannot change anyone else, nor can I do much to alter the course of world events. But I can call on my own best self to grow a little muscle and to develop a little more self-discipline. Hence, “pause, choose.”

My best self is the one who continually steps into that invisible space between stimulus and response in which Viktor Frankl so astutely recognized an opportunity for growth and freedom. Somehow, each of us must find a way to live with the fact that goodness and evil, suffering and joy, mundanity and beauty all coexist in this complicated, precarious, contradictory world. It’s up to me, to each of us, to find a way to make of our own lives an offering, a blessing, a gift. Simple kindness seems like as good a place as any to start.

And so in this year 2020, I’ve given myself the humble yet rather profound challenge of being less reactive and more intentional. Less emotional and yet more aware. Less sensitive and yet more compassionate. Moment to moment, day by day, in big ways and in small ones.

When I envision the self who embodies the concept of “pause, choose” I see someone who feels her own feelings, even the uncomfortable ones, before acting on them or shutting them down. In the heat of a moment, she takes a deep breath. She defuses the tension rather than adding to it. She gives the other person the benefit of the doubt. She waits a minute or two or twenty before doing or saying anything at all. She listens attentively, actively, with her whole being. She doesn’t interrupt. She is patient. She has a way of finding the humor in the hard times, the light in the dark, the beauty in the loss, the grace that is almost always part of grief. She steps out of her own shoes so she can slip into someone else’s. She speaks with care. She cultivates peace rather than stirring up conflict. She isn’t afraid to be wrong, to be vulnerable, to be seen. She clears space in the day for quiet, for solitude, for reflection. She turns off her phone, closes her computer, and gazes out the window, allowing her own thoughts to come and go. She pays attention to the intuitive, quiet voice inside that says “do this, not that.” She creates beauty in small ways and finds meaning and purpose in small doings. She is kind. She holds her dear ones close and lets them know they are seen, valued, and loved, exactly as they are.

These may sound like pretty modest ambitions in the face of all that’s wrong in the world. And yet to really commit to “Pause, choose” could result in a kind of quiet transformation. These two words together seem to offer a path toward healing, toward freedom, toward a deeper understanding of what it means to take better care of ourselves and of each other. When I remind myself to “Pause, choose,” I’m really reminding myself that what I do and what I say and how I act in any given situation brings either positive, useful energy into the world, or its opposite. Pause, choose. Imagine what could happen if everyone did it.

Today, may you choose peace. May you not
make war with yourself, your family, your world.

May you choose calm over chaos, acceptance
over aggression, and surrender over struggle.

May you be kind to your body, and thankful
for how steadfastly it carries you through life.

May you be attentive to your mind,
and grateful for how clearly it guides you.

May you dwell fully in your good heart,
which only aches to be tender and true.

Today, may you to learn to make peace
with each delicate moment, just as it is.

And may your quiet, unconflicted presence
serve to soothe and enliven the whole world.

~Claudia Cummins

(Note: Some of you have asked about the “pause, choose” bracelet. A gift from Lauren, it arrived serendipitously in my mailbox yesterday, just as I was finishing this essay. You can find MyIntent.org., the small company that turns words and intentions into jewelry, here.)

Originally published at https://www.katrinakenison.com on January 18, 2020.