I recently realized that I pause before everything
that I do. When I have a notion to do something – get out of bed in the
morning, speak to a stranger, begin a difficult task, indulge in a guilty
pleasure, give aide that’s been requested, push back against an unreasonable
demand – I almost always pause a moment to consider.
This was possibly a very powerful insight, because
I understood immediately that there are so many things I’d like to do that
never get done because of this pause. But it’s only potentially powerful
because much depends on what I will do with it.
Pausing is often a very good thing. It can and has
kept me from doing irrational, impulsive things. But the truth of it is that
pausing mostly keeps me from things I ought to do. It gives me time to consider
risks, to count possible costs. It allows me to be ‘reasonable’, which the
coaches at Landmark Education were always quick to point out generally means ‘ordinary
and safe’.
Pausing keeps me from exposure, maybe from
embarrassment and shame, from being overextended. But it also keeps me from
putting myself on the line, from pushing myself when I really need to, from
just going for it. Pausing has generated so, so much procrastination and delay,
so much avoidance.
I need to do away with this always, automatic
pausing. I know that there are lots of times I have not paused, sometimes to the
extent of surprising myself. I’ll have to consciously try and remember more of
those times, because my sense is that they usually led to something very good.
I had another insight many years ago, which ties
directly into this one: that most of my life’s regrets are not about
ill-advised things I did, but about the things I did not do.
