Choosing to pause

In 1950, when Anne Morrow Lindbergh took a five-day solo retreat on Captiva Island in South Florida, it came as an offbeat and unlikely pause in the midst of what she called her ‘untidy, complicated’ life. As a pioneer aviator, socialite and poet, she enjoyed adventurous exploits and ‘firsts’ with her husband and fellow pilot, Charles Lindbergh. In 1929, she became the first woman in the US to earn a glider pilot’s licence. The following year, she served as navigator on a transcontinental flight with her husband which set a new speed record. Lindbergh also lived in the searing light of public criticism, political controversy, and exploited grief after the kidnapping and death of her firstborn son, all while mothering five remaining children on a very global stage. Her life was no beach vacation.

Telling the truth

During her time on Captiva Island, Lindbergh began writing a small volume of essays, which she published in 1955 as Gift from the Sea. The book arrived like a message in a bottle to an audience of post-war women. Almost 70 years later, many of Lindbergh’s simple and honest reflections about the rhythms of life, the tensions between relationships and vocation continue to speak to a more modern audience, too.

Lasting impact

In that fleeting window on Captiva, Lindbergh had a moment to tell herself the truth and to see herself in the world around her. Later, she said that she wrote those essays in order to “work out my own problems.” By taking a pause, she gained insight that brought a new sense of order, clarity and meaning to her life that stayed with her until her death decades later at 94. Much of her external world and situation remained the same, but she reframed her roles and responsibilities. She simplified the phases of motherhood and marriage in her mind, including the “not beautiful, but functional” oyster bed of midlife.

Overcoming inertia

I confess that while I believe in the value of retreat and in the power of pause, I don’t easily commit to them, even if I feel a mounting need for change or for more. I can easily settle for my current reality, with a couple of exceptions:

Exception one

I get slammed by some wave of adversity or flipped by a deep need that makes obvious my need to regroup and rethink my life. Simultaneously, an unexpected opportunity arises that matches my need. When the need and the provision arrive at once, there is no time to get in my own way. I often jump aboard without much forethought, and I am often relieved at how quickly insight, connection and equilibrium follow. Nature and people speak to me. My soul appears. I can hear my best thoughts again.

This happened to me in my early 20s. Stung by the betrayal of a friend, I took a ferry from Vancouver to join a group of strangers on tiny Thetis Island. I thought I was running away for comfort, to feel safe for a while, but the pause and the sea had other gifts for me. On Thetis, I saw myself clearly again not just in the musty conference rooms of a retreat centre, but in the “mushy vulnerability” of the sea— in the words of a naturalist along the shore, in the curling bark of arbutus trees with their layers of variegated beauty, and in the discarded shells of growing hermit crabs washed up in tidal pools. Since then, I’ve been a hermit crab and an arbutus, for life.

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Exception two

The build-up is slow. I sense my need to find more clarity or to break free from the demands of my everyday life, but I tend to talk myself out of anything formal or organized. I stall. I wonder. I dabble in unstructured reading and research. I scroll. I talk with friends. I suffer a bit. And then, eventually, I find myself open to an offering that a trustworthy friend or associate points me toward: something they’ve read, experienced, led or found that opened up an important pathway for them to move forward with meaning.

This happened more recently. I was stuck at a vocational crossroads. I had to choose between projects, partners, and different business models. I wondered if I could wade in to my options or if impact really only comes to those who dive headfirst into the depths. I didn’t know how to process what mattered to me, how to weigh my options with my values. So, I stalled. I wondered. I dabbled. I scrolled. And then I saw an invitation to bring one big life question to ponder at A Day by the Sea. I knew and trusted Peter Reek as the facilitator. So I signed up.

I arrived to a panoramic view of the islands off the Pacific coast where I had gone decades ago to retreat on Thetis. Even before the program began, in greetings and conversation with others, I had already received insight into my question, and sensed the interest and intention of others. Like Lindbergh’s time on Captiva, the day by the sea offered me room to think, to tell myself the truth. It invited me to pause and pay attention. Through self-reflection, intent listening, effective coaching and honest conversation, I came away with simple but enduring insights that have reframed my vocational identity.

The pause is the thing

Some people love retreating to the sea, and others to deserts or mountains, urban parks or small corners of their own mind. Wherever you prefer to take it, the effects of a true pause are the same. With less effort than it takes to organize a garage or a kitchen drawer, we can slow for as little or as long as we have, and start shedding our excess, living in the moment, seeing what matters. We can go from clutter to clarity, complexity to simplicity, reaction to response, passing observation to enduring insight. Even when our circumstances or surroundings remain much the same, the power to reframe and reconfigure our approach is right there in an offbeat and unlikely pause.

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‘The key to pursuing excellence is to embrace an organic, long-term learning process, and not to live in a shell of static, safe mediocrity. Usually, growth comes at the expense of previous comfort or safety. The hermit crab is a colorful example of a creature that lives by this aspect of the growth process (albeit without our psychological baggage.) As the crab gets bigger, it needs to find a more spacious shell. So the slow, lumbering creature goes on a quest for a new home. If an appropriate new shell is not found quickly, a terribly delicate moment of truth arises. A soft creature that is used to the protection of built-in armor must now go out into the world, exposed to predators in all its mushy vulnerability. That learning phase in between shells is where our growth can spring from. Someone stuck…is like an anorexic hermit crab, starving itself so it doesn’t have to grow.’

‍― Josh Waitzkin, The Art of Learning: A Journey in the Pursuit of Excellence