The Pauses.

It's been a long time since I had a Saturday afternoon to myself. Saturdays tend to be the most exhausting day of my work week as most of my fieldwork happens then, and on the rare occasion that I'm not working, social obligations take over. So it was sooo lovely to have a comparatively sunny day in which I didn't have to be anywhere or do anything other than read. I think the last time I had a completely "me" Saturday afternoon was in January. Wow.

It's so nice to pause.

I find that I'm always busy with something or the other...I'm describing this phase of my life as the Work Hard Play Hard phase. Intense work obligations, occasionally overwhelming social obligations - I feel like I'm in constant cycle of running from work to dinner to big important meeting to brunch to seminar to bar to project assessment to party to conference call to concert to email blitz to family time to deadlines to heart-to-heart chat. I'm rarely still, rarely alone. The person with whom I spend most of my time, who is by far an even more extreme version of me, is currently sniffling on a couch somewhere waiting for me to bring him soup because he's worked so hard that his body's completely crashed on him. Poor thing. Perhaps it's the curse of our twentysomethingness, an incessant need to make something of ourselves.

Which is why it was appropriate that the book I was reading on my lazy Saturday was 'The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work' by Alain de Botton, one of my absolute favourite writers ever. (On my e-reader, with my iPod blaring and my cellphone next to me - I am truly a product of my generation.:)) This quote stood out:

"For the rest of history, for most of us, our bright promise will always fall short of being actualized; it will never earn us bountiful sums of money or beget exemplary objects or organizations. It will remain no more than a hope carried over from childhood, or a dream entertained as we drive along the motorway and feel our plans hovering above a wide horizon. Extraordinary resilience, intelligence and good fortune are needed to redraw the map of our reality, while on either side of the summits of greatness are arrayed the endless foothills populated by the tortured celibates of achievement.

Most of us stand poised at the edge of brilliance, haunted by the knowledge of our proximity, yet demonstrably on the wrong side of the line, our dealings with reality undermined by a range of minor yet critical psychological flaws (a little too much optimism, an unprocessed rebelliousness, a fatal impatience or sentimentality). We are like an exquisite high-speed aircraft which for lack of a tiny part is left stranded beside the runway, rendered slower than a tractor or bicycle."

May more pauses reveal more truths, more room to recalibrate, more head space to acquire extraordinary resilience, intelligence (and good fortune?); to deal with those minor yet critical psychological flaws.

Now, to deliver some soup.