PAUSING

…space for thinking & thriving…

(…)

…so, Mary Budd Rowe studied what she called “wait time.” She found that when teachers paused a little longer after asking a question, or after a student responded, the quality of language, reasoning, and participation improved.

And yet, teachers — and people in general — often find it difficult to pause. We rush to respond. We fill silence. We interrupt the space in which thought might be forming.

But we need pauses in order to think.

Questions are good triggers for pauses. They invite curiosity, but they also ask something of us. A real question does not always produce an immediate answer. It creates a small opening, a moment of uncertainty, a brief interior delay. Often, after a challenging question, there is a natural pause. Something in us knows that a response needs time.

We also pause while we speak. Sometimes we do this through filler language — “um,” “well,” “basically,” “you know.” These little verbal bridges give the brain a moment to catch up while keeping the conversation moving. They are not always signs of weakness or uncertainty. Sometimes they are small shelters for thought.

I am always drawn to people who seem to be thinking as they speak. Not simply performing thought, or delivering a memorized script, but actually assembling meaning in real time. Elizabeth Blackburn does this beautifully in her TED talk, offering moments in which the audience can think with her. Donald Fleming, Alain de Botton, and Stewart Brand also come to mind. Their manner of speaking makes room for the odd pause, the searching pause, the pause that signals not emptiness but attention.

Even when we are not speaking, our minds often fail to pause. They leap. They skim. They move restlessly from one idea to the next without staying anywhere long enough to investigate. I remember this vividly from a Quaker meeting I once attended in Princeton with a friend. As I have written before, I had to slow down my monkey brain in order to think truly about anything. My mind kept changing channels, like someone holding a television remote, flicking from one thing to another without ever settling long enough to see what was actually there.

So, can we learn to pause?

Can we learn to abide silence for a moment or two, not as an awkward absence, but as a space in which thought might gather?

I believe we can. More than that, I think we should. We need to develop our own small rituals for pausing before we answer, before we send, before we decide. A breath. A question. A hand resting on the table. A moment of looking away from the screen.

The pause does not have to be long. It only has to be real.

In an ever-accelerating world, such a pause might help us avoid the careless phrase, the brittle email, the premature judgment, the unnecessary reaction. A moment or two can be rich with potential: A true pregnant pause.

Keep well, and let’s pause to think more deeply to thrive…