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.)
What a January gift to see in my inbox. As always your words are a balm for my agitated soul. I feel like I wake up every morning and peek out behind my fingers, so apprehensive for the new day. I will try to pause and choose to be better. My anxieties have never really been useful anyway. Thanks for your soothing soul and words that will lift my day. ( Stay warm, I just saw it was zero in my little NH summer hill town up on Rt. 31)
This post moved me in a very positive and lasting way. Every year I’ve chosen my one word as the guiding light for my thinking and behavior as the new days unfold. Words have included: Believe (as in Be Live), Inspiration, Joy, Acceptance. Not having fully committing to my word for 2020, Pause – Choose – as in Intentionality – was the light bulb I needed to embrace my word. I am every grateful with each post Katrina offers, am inspired by her reflections and extend my abundant appreciation for the way she expresses what so many of us feel. Am feeling very blessed.
Thank you so much.
Your essay found its way to me after a day of struggling to find my holy space where I can wait to react, wait to feel how fast my heart is beating, and wait to take a breath. To wait for my calm pause. I know that when I wait, even for a simple three beats and a breath, I can, at the very least, access love. From love is where I operate as my best self. Thank you for this extraordinarily beautiful reminder. I am so pleased that the universe delivered it to me. Love, and peace to you.
Ahhh….. your words are just exquisite. The singular words you *choose* (did you pause as you chose them? 🙂 ) and the combination of them together are truly like a balm to me and I identify with so much of how you write. The beautiful way you construct word pictures, to tell the story of how you view life and yourself in this life is just so…… deeply satisfying to me. I appreciate your authentic ways. While you and I do not share common views on some things, it doesn’t matter AT ALL! For I do share (we share!) a common appreciation for the holiness of everyday life and a continuing desire to recognize and appreciate it ever more consistently. I haven’t “read” you for too long Katrina, and I am very happy I stumbled across your thoughts this early, snowy morning in Washington state.
The glow of a morning fire, the hum of the heater, the patter and splat of rain outside my window … and this. Your words are orbiting my space right now and I can’t help but feel like I am better just for having heard them. Thank you, as always, for your calm, impassioned walk through the chaos of the times. Peace to you in your pausing / choosing.
I very much enjoyed, and deeply felt, your words here. Thank you. In many ways you’ve captured my own feelings here. Wishing you peace and continued health.
I try hard not to print much these days, as a kindness toward the environment, but this essay I am going to print. I am considering carefully precisely where to place it -on my desk in front of the window upstairs, where I will see it when I try to write each day -in my closet where I will contemplate it as I start my day. Like you, I struggle between turning toward comfort (music, tv, etc) to avoid the constant barrage of suffering, and facing it and acting. Your words have stirred me, and came at the perfect time.
Thank you.
Tears – relief of feeling understood and lifted up. Always as your words have been for me since I was a mom of young children and found your “Mitten Strings.” Thank you for sharing your wisdom.
As always your posts are a beautiful sight when they appear in my email inbox. And as always you’ve hit a nerve. My life the last year has looked like the lyrics to a country song- the end of a twenty year relationship, a major move, my beloved dog of 12 years dying and on and on. The shock and the fog of sadness are finally lifting and I’ve decided to focus on me and the things that I want and need. To start taking social media off my phone as I will not go through another election year in the same agitated way I did in 2016. That time will be better spent getting back to me and activities that bring me joy and peace – scrapbooking, zentangling, genealogy research and more reading and writing. I’ve found that the more I’m on social media the less I read books and my attention span shortens which affects my writing. Thank you for the reminder that it’s possible to choose not to respond and time spent learning that to know better is to do better.
Thank you for this beautiful piece of writing which brings tears to my eyes. Yes, we all need to strive to be our best selves when there’s so much chaos in the world.
beautiful, as always.
What a lovely essay with beautiful thoughts and words, thank you for sharing!! I often start my day by reading your essays in Moments of Seeing, your words uplift me and create connection and beauty every day! Thank you for you! An amazing gift to us all! xoxox
Thank you giving my day a peaceful start. I will read this again. And again.
I have been thinking so much about you, dear Katrina, and here you are on this snowy Minnesota morning with beautiful words for me to ponder – and comments by other readers that fill my heart too! It IS a small world and we will continue to encourage each other!
Thank you for knowing you were missed and writing to us. I’m reading Jessye Norman’s book “Stand Up Straight and Sing” which gives her wisdom in words and music. You’d like it, dear Katrina, for you both choose compassion and kindness.
Blessings in this new year.
Over land, over water they came to find me in a southern city in The Netherlands, looking at my incoming email. It is good to know that somewhere, in a different part of this beautiful earth under siege, lives a woman who can voice my thoughts, hopes, worries and fears in a way that touches my soul. It feels less alone while the journey remains a solitary one. Wishing you peace and trust.
Katrina, all I can say is “Thank you” for this today.
Pause, choose… awesome
Thank you SO much Katrina. I love your writing and am always thrilled to see your name in my in box. I needed these words today. I so struggle with trying to stay present and not fall into despair with all the horror going on in humanity and what we are doing to Mother Earth.
I see to have an ever present lingering fear which of course is not good for my health.
This writing is like a most welcome calming. Pause and choose….lovely.
As always, your writing is so beautiful. I relate to all you have to say in a very deep way. We are walking along the same path. Thank you.
You’ve touched my soul today with your eloquently written words and thoughts. I will read this time and time again and will also print in out because simply, it is so beautiful.
Thank you and bless you!
Loretta
‘Respond, rather than react’…the words I’ve been trying to live by, similar to your ‘pause, choose.’ If only the whole nation, maybe the world, could pause, then choose, “what a wonderful world it would be.” Meanwhile, I always come away from reading your blogs inspired both by your words and the heartening, heartfelt comments which reassure me that there are so many like-minded people ‘out there.’ Thanks to you, and to all those in this community of kindred souls.
Thank you for these beautiful words – needed this today.
Thank you for the inspiration to consider my own 2020 intention. Always grateful for the example you set for me as a writer, a mom, and a person. Sending blessings and love north as I watch the dogs tumble and play in the new snow and search my own heart.
Your words and thoughts are so insightful and impactful. They resonate and strike a chord. I am truly grateful and deeply appreciative of your wisdom and compassion. Peace and grace be yours through our pauses and chooses this coming year.
Thank you for writing this Katrina. I so enjoyed reading it. And I love the pause choose idea. Thanks so much for sharing ❤
Pause, choose.
Strength, compassion.
With Joy hearing my dog snoring.
I can’t tell you how much I love this post. Thank you, dear K… x o x o
My intention, ‘breathe’, is set for similar reasons as yours. I don’t know where to go on days when it feels like everything is going upside down and nowhere at all. Thank you for letting me know I’m not alone.
Profound and so resonates how I feel these days. Simple kindness and gratitude by each of us can make a difference in this troubling world. I always appreciate your words and in these today’s toxic atmosphere, even more so. I can assure you pause and choose will be part of my daily mantra.
This post is absolutely beautiful and insightful. I’ve read it a couple of times, thinking about it throughout my day, grateful for your words and reflections, and enjoyed reading the comments posted by your readers. We’re listening, enchanted. xo
Thank you Katrina. Your words spoke to my heart. They expressed so much of what I’ve been thinking and feeling but haven’t been able to articulate. And, as always, they brought me hope and a way forward.
I am grateful you chose to write and post this. Yes, I do look for your writing in my inbox (along with a few others) and then savor it after quickly deleting so many unimportant messages. And I am glad to hear that you are holding space for both action and pausing – as a POC (and while keeping in mind people in all kinds of marginalized groups, and like you mentioned the other things happening in the world) it gives me hope to know that others are doing something. And at the same time also trying to hold space for peace in their lives. It’s too often that I hear folks say they would just rather not deal with anything and their pendulum swings only to one side. It is work to do both. Thank you again…and I look forward to your writing again.
Thank you, Katrina for your inspiring words. Pause, choose- and so many beautifully articulated words in between spoke to my heart today. It is always in choosing to be our best self that we can have hope and make a difference.
Dear Katrina, I love that you ask the question of yourself in the introduction to your email “I wonder what I might add?” I hope by the response here from your many readers/friends that you realize how much your words contribute. For me you mostly bring hope. Maybe hope is my word for the year. I have just finished (this morning!) rereading Magical Journery after first rereading Gift of an Ordinary Day. It seemed especially nice to receive your email and thought to myself “Oh Katrina has written!” somehow thinking that you knew I had spent the last few weeks with your books for guidance and inspiration. Like one of your other readers said, I too, will be printing this one out to keep by my bedside. So if you ever wonder again, what you might add, please reread these messages and know how important your voice is to so many of us. We are a community of strength and positivity and your voice is a thread that connects us.
I had a thought yesterday morning that I had not read thoughts from you for a while and what a lovely surprise to find your email in my inbox
yesterday morning. I have just read it and found the thoughts so beautifully written.Thank you.
Lois
I send along GRATITUDE for the gift of your gracious and most-inspiring words. In a time where I am fervently dissecting myself in an attempt to find some “traction” to my new chapter of life, (age 67) – “pause….choose” touched my heart. My word for 2020 is “JOY” and I now realize that has pausing and choosing has to be an integral launch to my joy. Thank you for such wise and sincere advice and beautiful encouragement!
K,
I am quote collector. Of course I had to capture Frankl’s words of wisdom, and this beauty – ” … beauty in loss , grace that is almost always part of grief …”
When I went to add these to my ever-growing list, I came across one of my more recent quotes. This one by Susan Branch was written before the rush of Christmas (who doesn’t need to “pause” during those hectic days) but just as good for the New Year.
“Enjoy, Girlfriends. Take time to stop and smell the flowers. I marked off a couple of FREE days on my December calendar already, for serendipity or sleep, whichever comes first! Make some space for yourself for appreciating. Breathing is more important than doing. Time, for you, for friends and family, that’s the best gift of all, and the hardest to come by..”
Perhaps I’m on the way to finding my own word(s) – wait, breathe, appreciate.
Thank you for your words. Beautiful as always.
Thank you so much for this lovely essay, Katrina! Your beautiful writing of so much of how I feel is inspiration to me. Thank you, thank you! I will take your words for my words as we begin this new year.
Thank you, Katrina. Your words are what I needed to hear right now at this time in my life. Beautiful!
I also ordered my “Pause Choose” bracelet.
I so look forward to seeing an email from you in my inbox. Beautifully written, as always. Thank You 🙂
Oh, I love this. There’s nothing humble, in my opinion, in the goal to be less reactive. I’ve often pondered the same Viktor Frankl quote with a combination of longing and recognition. I also have a MyIntent bracelet someone gave me a few years ago. I love it.
xox
Thank you, Katrina, for so beautifully expressing what I am feeling.
Beautiful, poignant and inspiring. Thank you for sharing your thoughts Katrina.
Thank you, dear Katrina, for your brilliant, beautiful words. I had chosen “intentional” for my 2020 word, and I like yours even better! Your calm and thoughtful guidance always helps me find my way forward in these crazy times. xoxo
I have missed your posts, but I happily realized I can pull out one of your books and get a daily dose of your wisdom.
Another writer I enjoy, Mary Schmich, reflected on word choice and shared a similar sentiment to pausing. (Link below) I, too, feel many of the the things you describe feeling, Katrina. Thank you for sharing your thoughts and reflections.
https://www.chicagotribune.com/columns/mary-schmich/ct-met-mary-schmich-new-year-word-20200104-uxhx6xdanjdv5mqulabl2u35hi-story.html
Yes, yes, yes. To all of this, a deep yes. Thank you for writing and sharing.
Good words, all. And pause-choose makes so much sense. It’s so easy to knee jerk, especially these days when it seems that eveyrone in the world is doing just that. We all do have choice. And not everyone’s is ours (darn!). But we can choose.
In these cold days of Michigan winter I find myself listening to hearings and trying to breathe and be calm. And be warm. My word this year is HOME. And all the things that means. My house, my cottage, my body, my mind, my soul. They are my home. And now, to live that.