Paused?

It's like someone has pushed the pause button...and life...mid sentence...is frozen.  And if you looked at this freeze frame of it...you would wonder...what are they doing in there?  Our faces contorted into strained unnatural looks, and you can't tell what is going on.  Is it good or bad?  No one is moving forward or backward....we're just stagnant.  It seems we are waiting for someone to push the button and life will resume right where it left off. 

No accomplishing, no doing, like the same water running over and over the fountain, life is just going, just going through the motions.  Over and over we wake, ready and work.  We come home, eat and bed, only to wake, ready and work again.  The gravity of responsibility threatens like dark storm clouds.

There are many goals, projects, and tasks...none getting the attention they deserve and need.  We read, watch, dream, and hope instead.  We choose different paths, plans, and activities, only to reflect and wonder why we didn't...fill in the blank?  Do we really want those things....that we dream of and hope for?  We ask ourselves...what keeps us from doing what we know we should do if that is the destination that we really want, and long for?  Exhaustion, lack of energy or focus, confusion, feeling stifled, not knowing where to begin, the need to take the first step...etc each owning a part of our indecision, our stand still. 

While it may seem that it's pointless, life moves on.  Babies are born, old friends die.  This IS life...the act of breathing in and out, talking, looking forward, and harkening back.  Laying together on the bed, one reading the other tapping on the keys of a laptop.  The every day. It's not the extraordinary things that make up life, but the every day things.  Life isn't on hold or frozen...this is it...now. It's so true what Lucy Maud Montgomery said in Anne of Avonlea "I believe the nicest and sweetest days are not those on which anything very splendid or wonderful or exciting happens but just those that bring simple little pleasures, following one another softly, like pearls slipping off a string." 

Perfect sandwiches in your lunch made by your beloved, laughing over being teased in email, the skin of the top of your foot touching the leg of the one you love, the smell of vanilla candles, the turn of two sets of eyes toward one another at the  hearing of something shockingly funny, the connection of sitting close, dinner that was prepared several weeks ago and frozen, tucked away for a night just like tonight, the sound of frogs in the distance dancing in the window, laughing and a little one laughing with you...."like pearls slipping off a string." 

No, life isn't paused or frozen.  Indeed it moves forward, vibrantly, actively passing one moment after the other.  We are highly aware that "The days are long, but the years are short" - G. Rubin.  And so we consciously push the button ourselves.  We are awake and present.  We reach out and grab each one of those pearls and cherish them...even the painful, disappointing ones because often it's that kind that heightens our awareness, that bring things into microscopic clarity.  And so as we watch the moments pass we neatly file those pearls away in the back of our hearts, perhaps to take out on another day, but we excitedly wait with anticipation the coming of another moment and all the potential it has in it...giving each as much meaning as is possible.  It's time for sleep...because tomorrow I need to wake, ready and work...the very things of life!  J.