Newfangled Hygge

We live in a fast world.

Even more than that, we live in a world that rewards speed.

We answer emails and texts quickly. We move quickly from task to task, project to project.

We go from making lunch to washing dishes to doing laundry to helping a child with a project to playing editor for our husband’s work email to texting a friend to starting dinner to taking a kid to soccer practice to serving dinner to getting a child an extra glass of milk to clearing the table to loading the dishwasher to bath time to helping with pajamas and brushing teeth to reading a story to singing six songs to getting ready for bed ourselves to finally going to sleep.

But a meaningful life requires more than going through those fast motions.

A meaningful life requires attention.

I am the worst at pausing.

What does pausing mean? It means actually taking a breath, slowing down, and asking ourselves things like:

What is really happening right now?

Is this a problem, or is this a moment?

What do I want to remember about this?

Oftentimes in moments I don’t do this. I don’t pause and run through a mental checklist to keep myself grounded. I am the queen of reacting. And, I have to admit, I seem to have less patience as my kids get older.

Now, a pause doesn’t mean we have to have endless patience. I don’t think it means we’ll never be overwhelmed, annoyed, or tired again, either.

What a pause can mean is the outcome of a moment could be entirely different.

Think of my tea time story in my post. “the moments I was missing.”

If I had truly taken a pause and listened to my daughter’s questions, the outcome could have been different. The moment could have happened that first day instead of the next. Not only that, but maybe I wouldn’t have seen the moment as a stressor- maybe I would have seen it as an opportunity.

If my child spills something and my first reaction is, I just cleaned that!… my child is going to remember that. So in that moment, the question is: “Is the floor/mess more important, or my child?”

If my child asks for something unexpected- to paint our nails, or read a story, or do a science experiment- the question can be: “Is the request actually taking something from me, or is it offering something?”

And another one- at the end of the day when we’re feeling exhausted and thinking, I just need everyone to stop needing me right now, the question can be: “What do I need right now? Quiet? Help? Rest?”

The other day dinner was in the oven and I started going through the list of things I needed to do. But I took a second to take roll call of my body/symptoms/feelings.

I was tense. I was tired. The day had been full and all I really wanted to do was work on something I hadn’t worked on in months.

So that’s exactly what I did.

The pause does not just relate to moments with others, but moments with/for ourselves, too.

I decided that I more than needed to take some time to really slow down. I hadn’t had the desire to work on my cross stitch since January (and, yes, it’s July). There had been other priorities and tasks and projects that had overshadowed it. But now I wanted to give it my attention.

The pause is a moment where we remember we are not just managing our lives- we are living them.

When every moment is filled with notifications, chores, activities, expectations, noise- there is no room for curiosity. For ourselves or our children.

The pause is where we can hear ourselves.

I don’t know about you, but I miss actually hearing myself.

And I don’t mean hearing the endless list of things that needs to be done or written down or remembered running through my head on repeat.

I mean hearing my ideas, my gratitudes, my joys, my hopes, my dreams.

It’s so easy for those to get lost in the noise and the speed of life.

So, before we can really find the joy, create the life we love and want- we have to learn to notice the one we’re already living.

Odds are, the life we are living is already full of joy. But it’s hard to notice if we never slow down.