The Power of The Pause
I recently watched the new American medical drama series The Pitt. It’s an engaging look at issues that frontline emergency room workers face as they treat critically ill patients. One of the many things that struck me emotionally while watching was the practice of “The Pause.” This is when the healthcare team takes a moment of silence after a patient’s death. This is a real life practice. Its purpose is to honor the patient and the team who cared for them. It’s a brief moment for reflection and processing in an otherwise chaotic day; a voluntary act of respect and acknowledgement. Several of these pauses occurred during the series and I was deeply moved each time I witnessed the practice.
This got me thinking about pauses and the many ways they can be helpful to us both individually and communally. Pausing gives us the opportunity for reflection, as we see in the emergency room example. In addition, pauses can aid us in more effective communication with others, and better decision making as we take time to align our behaviors with our values. I began wondering, what are some more examples of powerful pauses, and how can we remember to take them? Additionally, what role does pausing have in our Common Earth courses?
I started by contemplating times when we pause for big and small reflections. Most of us have participated in formal life pauses: at the end or beginning of a milestone experience or phase of life. We have ceremonies and rituals for these. Graduation ceremonies, baby namings, weddings, funerals, birthdays, anniversaries, holy days. We take these larger pauses to celebrate, mourn, commemorate. Sometimes our families or cultures or religions have created these pauses and most of us appreciate how they punctuate our lives with the opportunity for reflection.
For many of us, the less formal, unplanned, shorter pauses for reflection tend to be more challenging to regularly practice. Some examples are: taking the pause to appreciate a sunset, or a hummingbird at our window, or to reflect on loss when we see a bird’s egg that’s fallen from a nest. Or pausing to express gratitude when we drink a glass of cool, clean water or eat fresh fruit from a farmer’s market.
Dov Seidman, an American author and thought leader writes,
In this quote, Seidman is getting at some of the unique ways that pausing can help us move forward.
In order to communicate more effectively and have stronger relationships, pausing is a crucial tool. We can pause in a conversation with a friend or colleague to contemplate what we heard before speaking. We can pause in between sentences to slow down and choose words more carefully, and pausing with a good night’s sleep before responding to a provocative message can help us to respond from a place of calm instead of anger.
Pausing in order to align our behaviors with our values is an opportunity that is always available to us. This quote, ascribed to Victor Frankl, and which we share in the course, describes the power of this type of pause:
Some clear examples of this include our decision making around our attention and purchasing. In this digital age, algorithms are designed to keep us engaged on social media platforms and to make quick purchases in our highly market- driven consumer culture. Pausing before opening social media apps and before making purchases for things we don’t need or that were produced unethically or that pollute the planet gives us the opportunity to make a better choice that aligns with our values.
Pausing before and during meals is another opportunity to benefit from the pause in multiple ways. We can pause at the grocery store or restaurant and consider whether a food choice aligns with our values based on the ethical treatment of animals, the health of the soil where the food was grown, or the impact the production and transport and packaging of that food has on the planet. Once we’ve made our food choices, mindful eating, in which we put down the fork between each bite, gives us the opportunity to pause, reflect, and appreciate the texture and taste of the food, and allows for heightened awareness of hunger cues so that we only eat until we are satiated.
Pausing and responding thoughtfully instead of reacting impulsively can be difficult. What is helpful in remembering to take a pause? Meditation can help. For me, meditation feels like a big pause I take every morning. Exercise can help too. Taking a walk or even just stretching can provide a meaningful opportunity for a re-set. Like all habits, we get better with practice. And we have multiple opportunities every day to practice! Over time, our ability to pause will get stronger. It’s helpful to be self aware when we do successfully pause, reflect, and make better decisions for ourselves, others, and in some cases, the planet.
While reflecting on the Common Earth course to see where we encourage pauses, the first thing that came to mind are the activities we include from Joanna Macy’s “The Work that Reconnects.” For example, we begin with a gratitude exercise on the first day as part of our introductions; an opportunity to pause and think about a place that brings us joy, and then we share and describe that place to the group. Almost always, participants share descriptions of their favorite local places in nature. This pause has a few purposes. Hearing each others’ descriptions helps us to learn something unique about each other that can’t be found on a resume. In addition, this gives us the opportunity to start our journey from a place of gratitude for the Earth by reflecting on places that are special to us.
We also begin each session with a pause; either a guided meditation or a quotation related to the session’s topic followed by a few moments for contemplation. The purpose of this pause is to reset from whatever we were doing before the session began and have the opportunity to get centered and grounded together before we delve into the material. In addition to the reset, the pause includes something to reflect on that helps put us in the mindset of the topic at hand. We’ve been told by many participants that starting the classes this way is helpful and we hope that some of the short meditation practices we share are useful outside of the course as well.
So what if we all took more pauses? We know that pausing before making decisions and problem solving leads to more thoughtful, wise, effective outcomes.
Pausing also helps us to communicate better, reflect and acknowledge grief, and experience gratitude. As Tara Brach, psychologist and meditation teacher, writes in Radical Acceptance: