The Art of the Pause

Winter is a time of withdrawing from the world, maximising scant resources, carrying out acts of brutal efficiency and vanishing from sight; but that’s where the transformation occurs. Winter is not the death of the life cycle, but its crucible.

~Katherine May; Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times

There is no doubt that winter has its drawbacks -- shorter days, cold temperatures that keep you housebound (or wishing you were,) icy roads and random weather. When we look at winter through our contemporary lens its such an imposition, getting in the way of our best laid plans, our dreams and ambitions. But after reading Katherine May's beautiful ode to hard times about how the winters of our life form and reroute us - Wintering - I can't help put think we've got it all wrong. Winter is a very necessary part of the life cycle of plants, trees, animals, soil -- it makes spring, and then the harvests of summer and fall, possible. Physiologically, humans, too, experience a very real slow down during winter that should be observed.

Perhaps, then, the winter season could be considered a dress rehearsal, of sorts, for the figurative winters of our life, when stillness may be forced upon us. With this reframe, winter is not an imposition, then, but a necessary step in our own hermitage, a secluded dwelling place for us to practice solitude as we pause. Nature is clever enough to know we may need this reminder often; yearly, say.

I keep thinking about the very nature of stillness itself too - a deep foray into the heart of nothingness. The kind of stillness that you only can really experience in the depths of a winter, both literal and figurative. Do we have what it takes to be perfectly still for long periods of time where nothing happens and be alone with our thoughts? When I ask this question of myself, I realize, uncomfortably, that's a tough one for me. I am constantly distracting myself, whether with a book, a television show, work, a project, a text or phone conversation, etc. The truth is, that even in my downtime, I am busy. I am never doing nothing.

Lately, though, I've been craving true stillness. Definitely, in part, because its winter and I am wintering. After three weeks in upstate New York over the holidays, I slowed way down to catch my breath after a long, arduous and difficult year. I needed a time out, and I got it. But still, I just want more. Maybe because I'm getting older, I'm desparate to conserve energy and shed layers. Maybe because the world is a noisy place these days, and hard to shut out. Maybe I am wanting something out of reach and ethereal - something that doesn't actually exist. Whatever the reason, I only want to move inwards - away from the chaos and opinions of others.

In many spiritual and cultural traditions, this act of withdrawing from the outside world, away from your senses and into your own awareness, is vital for self-examination and connection to something greater. The Welsh have a word - hiraeth - that defines a spiritual longing for ancient places that we can never return to - nostalgia with no context. For me, this is why we must journey inwards, and why we need to pause often and make that trip.

In the ancient world, before the invention of electricity, humans shifted indoors after the sun set. As darkness fell, we slowed and finally slept. And at dawn, we rose again - to meet the light and embrace the day. We watched the seasons shift - in winter we sheltered, in spring we planted, in summer we harvested, in fall we prepared. Our rhythmns were simple, interconnected, and self-preserving. We still live in ancient bodies, fueled in many ways by ancient minds. And behind the veil of our modern brain, lies a deeper consciousness that still craves the quiet of these old ways. That actually maybe even requires it.

Perhaps my need for stillness, then, is a desire to meet my ancestors - to rest quietly with them until dawn, before the sun deposits us back into the noise of the world and the ideas of others.