puts the two parts of the pen together, replaces the inkwell, and returns to his task. This whole scene takes maybe two or three minutes.
My point here is not to overvalue nostalgic tasks of days-gone-by, but to point out how far we've come from that leisurely pace and to call attention to what was going on in the minds and souls of these people as they lived these quiet moments of their lives.
As I wandered around my grandfather's farm, I was learning very important information, not only about my physical world—land, pigs and, tractors—but about who I was: “I'm with my grandfather today; he's my mother's father, he's from Ireland; he talks with a brogue, he loves horses and pigs; he has a delivery company. I think he likes to have me with him. . . .” Of course these are not the words or the awareness that would have occurred to a ten-year-old boy, but you can be sure I was learning these things, and much more, too.
The woman shelling peas has spent her time in a kind of contemplation. As she moved in her soul from her garden to her neighborhood to her childhood to her sister's letter, she too was learning important information about herself: who she is and what she wants. Even the mailman's interruption did not keep her from returning to her contemplation.
The banker refilling his dry pen sees a metaphor for himself as the busy executive: He is running dry, needing to dip into the well of soul, and he refills his reservoir of energy and patience.
These are all moments of Stopping. They are moments of remembering, awareness, and contemplation. My point is that these moments—these life-giving, urgently important moments that slow life down so that we don't miss the important parts—are rare for us now. The good and hopeful news is that we can—and I believe must—make intentional choices to make them happen for ourselves. Because life no longer offers such pauses naturally, we can intentionally create times with little to do and of quiet work. We can place the seemingly blank spaces, the spaces that help us to learn important things, between the events of life. Just as we have had to make specific choices to get sufficient physical exercise, so we now have to make choices to put spaces in our lives, spaces with nothing to do. Creating these spaces is the purpose of Stopping.
Parents can help create safe but unstructured time, time with nothing to do, but with adventuresome space to do it in, for their kids. You might not shell peas, but you probably wash dishes, cut vegetables, mow grass, fold laundry, and do other things. If you don't have a fountain pen to use as a metaphor for refilling your reservoir, you probably have a gas tank. The moments that naturally occur for us are probably not as quiet as they were in years gone by, nor as naturally conducive to contemplation, but that's not a problem. If we first are Stopped enough to notice them, we can change many of those moments from annoyances to life-enhancing opportunities.
Stopping ultimately has the same purpose of intentional living as American naturalist and poet Henry David Thoreau had in 1845 when he went to live at Walden Pond: “I went to the woods because I wanted to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.” In the millennial era, most of us can't retire to the woods, so we have to create the Walden moments for ourselves.
Millions of persons long for immortalitywho do not know what to do withthemselves on a rainy afternoon.
SUSAN ERTZ
7
Stopping Before Everything
Stopping is a gentle art and is like an encouraging word that urges us to make the right decisions and choices: the ones we really want and the ones that are life-giving. These decisions are both the big, life-changing ones such as a career change, starting or ending a marriage, or moving to a new home, as well as the smaller, day-to-day ones such as, This purchase? That sales pitch at work? Tell her now or wait ’til later? In both senses of the phrase, Stopping comes before everything: Stopping should chronologically precede everything we do as well as assume a position of priority in our lives.
This is no small adjustment for most of us. This is a change in direction that will affect all the aspects of our lives. But I am not afraid that clearly stating the magnitude of the change will prompt you to say, “This is asking for too great a change. I don't think I want to get into this.” I am not afraid to tell the truth because the results are so promising: Not only will you find more moment-to-moment peace, but you will also find clarification of, even the discovery of, your life. Is there anything more important? And could there be anything much worse than knowing—when you are at the end of your life or even at the end of your day—that you missed it?
In both of my fields of work, priesthood and counseling, I have had many occasions to be with people as they are dying. At those moments, the saddest words to hear, and not the least common, are “If only I had known!” or “If only someone had told me!” The implication is that they would have lived their lives very differently and more in line with the truth they now see at the time of their death. And now, of course, they know it's too late. The realization brings a deep sadness.
This has led me to ask myself: Would they really have changed if they knew then what they know now? What if someone had revealed the truth to them? Would that have made a difference? My questions remain answerless until I direct them at myself: What do I need to know now so that I will not be in that situation? Since, as an adult, it is no one's responsibility to tell me what I need to know, what is it that must I tell myself? These are questions that will be answered only in the stillness that allows the hearing of difficult truths and in the slowness that allows me to notice them.
This brings us to another point. It is so obvious that it often escapes our attention. It is this: slowness fosters remembering and speed engenders forgetting. Czech novelist Milan Kundera makes this point eloquently in his novel, Slowness. It is a point not only fundamental to the understanding of Stopping, but essential to living successfully in today's world: “There is a secret bond between slowness and memory, between speed and for-getting. Consider this utterly commonplace situation: a man is walking down the street. At a certain moment, he tries to recall something, but the recollection escapes him. Automatically, he slows down. Meanwhile, a person who wants to forget a disagreeable incident he has just lived through starts unconsciously to speed up his pace, as if he were trying to distance himself from a thing still too close to him in time.”
Does that ring a bell with you like it did with me? Think of the times when you are trying to remember; you'll notice that you become very still and possibly stare into space. And when we want to forget something? Run, and keep running! Kundera states this truth in the form of equations: “The degree of slowness is directly proportional to the intensity of memory; the degree of speed is directly proportional to the intensity of forgetting.”
The faster we go, the more we forget. Then what often happens next is that we forget that we have forgotten. What a state to be in! But when we Stop, we remember again and, therefore, find ourselves.
If you can't meditate, vegetate.
MEN'S HEALTH MAGAZINE
8
Contemporary Contemplation
Stopping is not meditation as it is generally understood. It is a practice intended for citizens of the changing of the centuries who have no time to stop and smell the roses or the time or inclination to practice a whole system of daily meditation. It's for people who don't have time to fit in everything they are already obliged to do, never mind trying to fit in extras like meditating twice a day. Stopping is what
