The Pause

I had just finished making breakfast for my son one late Spring morning. He prefers to eat alone in the kitchen, so I went to sit on the couch in the other room to leave him his space.

In that gap of time while I waited for him to finish, I have built a habit of scrolling TikTok or YouTube. Anything to keep my mind busy and occupied.

This time my body froze. It refused to touch the phone or even glance at my laptop. Instead I found myself staring out of the open window at the trees moving in the wind, catching the sunlight. Hearing birds. Feeling the breeze coming through and brushing against my face.

I just sat there taking it all in.

When was the last time I sat like this? Doing nothing in particular. Just being in the moment. I couldn't tell you.

It felt unfamiliar. And yet completely natural at the same time. Peaceful. Calm.

I started to wonder. Why am I not doing this more often?

I used to.

As a child and a teenager I would sit outside and watch nature. The light changing. The wind shifting. No phone. No laptop. I rarely watched TV. I was always out and about, socializing, spending time with people. Being inside life itself felt more natural than watching it on a screen.

Now it's the opposite.

I'm always on my laptop. I constantly check my phone. And that feels completely normal.

The change happened so gradually I didn't notice it until my body staged this quiet revolt on an ordinary Saturday morning and simply refused to participate.

This is life on autopilot.

It feels normal. Picking up the phone before the impulse has fully registered. Filling the gap before the gap has been felt. Keeping the mind stimulated because the alternative, the stillness, has become genuinely uncomfortable.

We have been so thoroughly trained out of it that our own nervous systems no longer recognize stillness as a natural state.

The pause felt alien because it was. Alien to the version of me that the system finished constructing so long ago I stopped questioning what was mine.

When my son finished his breakfast I had to force myself to get back to doing things. And the doing things felt uncomfortable.

That discomfort is information. The body is registering the gap between what feels natural and what has been normalized.

The body never forgot what the mind agreed to leave behind.