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everyone should just take a moment


Somebody outside tried to drive through a pile of snow into a parking lot and got their car stuck. I've been watching on and off for about 20 minutes; different people stop and try to help, person just keeps trying to dig snow out from under the car. It occurred to me that we all do this kind of reckless estimation in our lives, the "it'll all just work out" leap that keeps us moving "forward", even if it ends up getting us stuck, even if we see the signs that point to "reconsider" or "stop" ahead of us.




The antidote, of course, is pausing to consider the variables but nobody likes to stop, nobody likes to slow down and consider much of anything. We all just choose movement, we all just choose it hoping it'll work out, we all just choose luck + movement and think this is how you progress, how you make real change. Real change is measurable though; real change is plottable, plannable, and predictable. Real change is based in self-consideration, and self-consideration is possible only with pausing.




Indigenous people know self-consideration; it is built into the morning ceremonies, the nightly ceremonies, the monthly ceremonies. It's in the sweat lodge, and the moon ceremony, and rites of passage ceremonies. Most people know it by other names but calling it self-consideration puts it energetically where it needs to be: within and without, straddling the concepts me and you and community, revealing the interplay of awareness, responsibilities, and obligation.




Yes, obligation: a word that is missing from the new age approaches to pausing. Obligation is no friend to lucky mindless leaps of action; obligation is deep, grounded, and considering. It sees the variables, it weighs the options, it plots the motions forward on the best next step, for me, for you, for community. It sits above and beyond "responsibilities": it is being compelled by a larger interconnectional understanding vs a choice action of stepping up to the plate. Obligation exists without witnesses to see it or participate in it; responsibilities emerges with them.

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