Inner Resistance is a Path to Renewal: The Practice of Pause
For a 15-year-old who loved to discover how things work, Mrs. Davis’ chemistry class was a lab of amazement. One of the many memorable experiments involved a bell jar vacuum chamber in which various items were placed, the air removed, and effects observed. Three years later, I would be using an industrial one in a fascinating job for a high school senior. I saw firsthand that not only does nature resist a vacuum, but vacuums have a profound effect on nature. This scientific principle has implications when we try to start a fire in a wood stoves during the cool winter months. It also has a satisfying effect as we sip a pumpkin spice latte through the spill-proof lid spout, and transformative value in the middle of our daily life. Let me introduce you to the practice of inner resistance.
We’re Too Busy To Not Slow Down
Little debate exists around the overall busyness of our daily lives. Technology has enabled us to skip through more mundane tasks and AI seems poised to offer unimaginable efficiency for the future. Yet, we feel busier, more frantic, and fuller than ever. I'm tempted to long for my pre-internet life when my pager allowed my wife to send a 9-digit number to cue my search for a landline. At this midpoint in life, I'm joining many others to create noticeable margins in my life. I don't get up as early at the cost of unhealthy sleep. I take space for low-impact exercise where I can be present both in body and mind. I take at least one, if not two, days for a weekend, and sometimes even three! A guy once lauded as "Mike, you get things done” is now getting less done on purpose; I am learning the wisdom that less is more. Expanding margins means narrowing my commitments, work life, and overall schedule by increasing my perimeter blank spaces. I’m adjusting my life from one-inch to one-and-one-half-inch margins. It has had an impact on my pace, anxiety, and performance professionally and personally. I am immensely grateful to the therapists, mentors, and especially my wife who have counseled me to take action in this way. Honestly, I was risking everything important and life-giving with my earlier lifestyle. By opening the edges of my life, I am able to focus on what counts in the middle. In this, the age-old wisdom is proved true once again: Less is more.
Outer life margins are a step toward Inner Resistance. If we are unable to establish a perimeter cushion to allay the frenetic pursuit of more and faster, it is virtually impossible to permit an unsettled negative pressure environment in the middle of our soul.
We’ll Never Be Satisfied
In the 1900s the mathematician and philosopher Blaise Pascal referenced an infinite abyss in the human heart that only something infinite can fill—a truth Augustine had intuited centuries earlier when he said our hearts are restless until they rest in God. As I consider this today I consider the idea that there is something that cannot be filled by any effort on our part no matter how creative and sustained. There is a negative pressure system in our soul and the instinct is to fill it and find balance. But, in the words of the Angelica, the eldest Schuyler sister of Hamilton fame, “He’ll never be satisfied."
Next Time The Ache Returns
Fearing I'm getting too philosophical or losing you, let me turn it ultra-simple and elementary. When we feel anxious or uncomfortable or sad or bored, we do something: scroll, clean, fantasize, tinker, numb out, distract, and more. I do it like everyone else does. All are attempts to fill that ache with a relieving ointment. But the wound doesn't heal because I (we) feel it again an hour or day later. Here’s the practice of Inner Resistance: Next time the ache returns and the impulse to relieve kicks in, let's pause. Don't, for a moment. Heck, let's wait for a day. A whole 24-hour period. But don't stop it for the sake of the coping mechanism being bad or to turn over a new better leaf. Pause it so you can stop and notice it with fresh eyes. If the phone buzzes in your pocket while sitting with a friend at lunch, or your phone dings in the other room while showering, leave it. If lying awake at 2 a.m. with no rhyme or reason, and little chance of falling back asleep, hold that extended moment of utter aloneness and quiet for the opportunity it is. If your spouse does something that deserves a comment, comeback, or critique to maintain the cycle of “marital justice”, pause. Let these quiet spaces, or more accurately, vacuums create an opportunity. They are small and centered in deep sensitive areas of our hearts. These moments show up in the secret space of me, myself, and I – others will not know when they are quietly speaking. And rather than rushing to cover them over, we can choose to sit and watch and wonder: How will this small moment coalesce? What is the ache? What do I notice about it? Where else is this present? What is noticeably present or absent? When have I felt this before? What will happen if I let it take its natural course?
It's Okay To Be Bored
I remember the familiar refrain from my kids when they were younger. "Dad, Mom, I'm bored.” On occasion it was a negotiation tactic for additional screen time. When I wised up to this and realized the power of this conundrum, I could offer with sincerity, “It's okay you're bored, and we're not going to use screen to fix it right now.” Inevitably they would face the unease of this vacuum. And they would find something to do far more creative and rewarding than the easy familiar go-to entertainment. It is easy to offer this to others, especially to our children. Not nearly so when it comes to parenting ourselves: “It's okay if you're bored/anxious/sad/uncomfortable/lonely. We're not going to use a screen, food, drink, chores to fix it right now.”
The Practice of Inner Resistance and Nonaction
As sophisticated and affluent adults, we have virtually every resource available to fix the vacuum. Few will find this practice of Inner Resistance within reach, or desirable. This is why it must be practiced. It is not original to me but a powerful one I've been reminded of as I journey with others deeply. Recently I read an essay from Francis Weller who finds a “marvelous tempering of the psyche by the heat generated through nonaction.” He goes on in The Gift of Restraint to explain how holding back, nonaction, creates invaluable space for dynamic tension in which something new can emerge. This is Inner Resistance and Weller elevates restraint and holding back as being “as necessary as action is to the soul.” Letting go of something, allowing something to remain unfinished or unfilled, is counter-intuitive. Yet, it is worth an experiment.
What happens when we welcome responses like the following in the vacuum of desire?
Not yet.
Wait for now.
Let's see what happens if I don't.
What's here if I watch and see? What else is happening here?
Might something unexpected emerge?
Maybe I could wait a little longer.
As with the bell jar, when the air is drawn out, what remains reveals what truly matters. Notice what idea, feeling, or experience is drawn into awareness. Document it and share with a trusted friend or partner. Within vacuum spaces, something new emerges. Human nature resists a vacuum, and permitting Inner Resistance will have a profound effect on human nature.