The Choice is in The Gap
“Sitting in The Gap” (Dedicated to Marion O.)
I am not going to talk about climate change in this blog post, but I will start by saying that, ecologically, the climate where I live has been a microcosm of 2020, a perfect metaphor for the pandemic. We had three months of dry winds that made up our spring. I am not talking about breezes, folks, I’m talking about twenty-five to forty mile per hour winds day after day. I am an avid hiker and love being outside, but I didn’t want to step outside my door for three full months. Then the summer hit hard in a matter of about a day, and we hit three digit temperatures overnight. If this was Arizona, I would have understood, but I live at over 7000 feet elevation. We don’t do high temperatures like that. We don’t even have air conditioners. Along with the heat came extreme dryness. I could not remember the last time it rained. The earth grew gray, brittle, and wrinkled. I felt like I was walking on a corpse at times. I know that I have not been the only person who has been concerned about our planet’s well-being.
But today, we had a small deluge. It is monsoon season, and although the rains usually miss the little valley in which I live, the skies opened up and literally dumped. Here is where my post really gets fun. As I am typing, the air is filled with the croaking of toads, the Mexican Spade Foot Toad, to be exact. They apparently mate during monsoon season but spend most of their time dormant and underground, so now, there is a symphony of mating toads outside my window. I thank some of my local friends for helping me understand my confusion when I thought I was hearing frogs in the high desert.
So what does this have to do with the pandemic? Well, you can probably make out the comparison with the weather, but the toads made something come to life for me just now. Just like the toads coming out en masse with the first real rain, our country has come out of hiding at the first sign of safety. We are all, well, a lot of us anyway, wanting to get back to “normal” and be with people again, do what we want to do, and just have some fun. If you aren’t one of these people, that’s perfectly okay and probably wise, but many of us want to be in the proximity of the human energy field again.
The reason I am writing this post, however, is this word, “normal”. I was, like many of my friends, hoping for something beyond normal in terms of the human condition post-pandemic. I think I had this crazy notion that after a year of contemplation about the truth of uncertainty and the new realization of what community means to the human species, that we would all come back in a haze of novice enlightenment. What I have noticed, however, and I hope I am not sounding negative, is that there is an edge around people, maybe a distrust, and also a good many walls that built up over the pandemic, which I might also add, coincided with many divisive and tragic events. Duality hit an all time high.
But like the toads croaking outside my window, we want to all come together now and create community while still coping with residual anger, frustration, distrust, and fear. I am not saying there isn’t an enormous amount of hope and love along with all of this, I am just saying that being “normal” might not be as easy as it looks at this point, and becoming a culture of enlightened beings might take awhile. I do, however, have great hope that we, during this last year of isolation and emotional challenges, have realized the importance of community, but at the same time, it is terribly important to re-enter into community with intention and wisdom.
So with this said, I would like to throw out an idea that is fairly simple but terribly difficult to cultivate in our western culture. It’s the idea of The Gap. Think about that moment between the exhale and the inhale. If you haven’t noticed it before, simply take a breath, and at the end of the expiration, just sit for a second or two before inhaling and notice what you feel. For me, there is just a second or two of stillness. My mind doesn’t go anywhere. It is a beautiful moment of quiet. Now just imagine; what if we all cultivated this idea of The Gap in all responses to our lives. For example, let’s say we read something a friend posts on social media. We all know what it feels like to type off an “I know better than you” response filled with indignant justified anger. I feel you all squirming. I am embarrassed at how many of these responses I have quickly and angrily pushed “send” on. What if we paused, instead, and simply gave ourselves a Gap in which to make that choice. The choice you make is your decision. I am just suggesting a pause to choose the path that that action will take. Or what if you find yourself frustrated with a family member or friend and just really need to vent your feelings with a third party. Again, don’t get too squirmy. The examples I am using are coming from my own life. The Gap might be just a moment or two, but it could be the difference between judging and gossiping about someone you love and letting them deal with their own stuff while you deal with yours. The Gap could lead to an openness and acceptance that might not happen if we don’t rush into our habitual patterns. We can even use this Gap with our feelings about ourselves. When we feel anxiety or shame or any kind of self-effacing emotion, we can simply pause in that stillness and make a choice of which direction we want our lives to go at that moment. It might be just enough time to see what is really true or what is really needed at that moment.
I’m not saying that this pause will solve all of the world’s problems, but it just might help us be with each other in a softer and kinder way. Isn’t that pretty enlightened after all? Being normal is, in reality, the old patterns of holding up walls of safety to protect us from our own fears. Perhaps with just a little practice, we can pause in this Gap and re-enter into a more compassionate community. The choice lies in each one of us if we just take a moment to pause.