Merciful Pauses
Diastole--The Necessary Pause
“Perhaps the wildness we fear is the pause between our own heartbeats, the silent space that says we live only by grace. Wilderness lives by this same grace. Wild mercy is in our hands.” from Red by Terry Tempest Williams
During the cycle of a normal heartbeat, the heart muscles contract, forcing the blood in the heart chambers out into the circulatory system and to all parts of the body. Then the heart muscles relax, the chambers expand, allowing new blood to fill the heart, before the next contraction. The contractions are called “systole”, the pause “diastole”. The diastolic pauses are as vital to staying alive as the systolic work of the heart muscle contractions.
Perhaps it is the same in life; we have periods of effective activity, followed by pauses in which it may seem we are not getting much done. Perhaps, as with the heart, those pauses are necessary to our productivity.
What might change in your life if you began to see those times when you don’t feel inspired, or very effective in checking things off your to-do list...what if you began to see those pauses as part of a normal, necessary, and overall highly effective cycle? Might you be able to be a bit kinder to yourself? Even begin to relax into and enjoy those times of recharge?
Imagine incorporating this attitude for the shorter activity cycles that occur multiple times during a day: Stretches of focused and intense work for a few hours can be followed by a break of deliberate (and enjoyable) relaxation. Not only might overall “productivity” go up, but clear-headed direction and vision might also improve.
In our efforts towards personal growth, this cycle of insight and progress followed by a pause, or even feeling “stuck”, is also common--and perhaps as necessary as in the heartbeat. Whatever “work” that gets us to the point of insight and growth might not take hold and root if not followed by a relaxed time of integration and conscious practice. Instead of berating ourselves for “being stuck” in our growth, we can choose to see these periods as necessary preparation for the next pulse, the next push forward.
The basic pulse of life--work/pause/work/pause, etc.--provides a useful template and model for how to grow, and for how one can choose to live. Show yourself some mercy that next time you scold yourself for being “stuck”. The next pulse forward is in the making.