Let’s Take a Moment

Life moves quickly these days. Though life has always moved so. Let’s take a moment.

When life hands you something out of the usual, it’s important to sit, to clear your schedule, to clear your mind. To sit with that difficult thing, or that joyous thing, or that weird or awkward thing, and just consider whatever it is that has happened.

For some reason, I keep thinking about an episode from Star Trek: Voyager these days. “Emanations.” If you’re a STV fan, you probably know the episode, but suffice to say, something important happens, something that shakes up Harry Kim. And Janeway, the captain, after all is said and done, says this to him:

“I just want to give you a chance to reflect on what's happened. This may not make much sense to you now, a young man at the beginning of his career. But one of the things you'll learn as you move up the ranks and get a little older is that… you wish you had more time in your youth to really, absorb all the things that happened to you. It goes by so fast. It's so easy to become jaded, to treat the extraordinary like just another day at the office. But sometimes there are experiences which transcend all that. You've just had one, Mr. Kim, and I want you to live with it for a little while. Write about it, if you feel like it. Paint. Express yourself in some fashion. The bridge will still be there in two days.”

This thing that has happened doesn’t have to be as mind blowing as what happened to Harry Kim.

Let’s say, you’ve lost a friend who has given you up for unknown reasons, or a dog has died, or someone you know well, or not very well, has died, or left town. You’ve had a break-up, a huge rejection. Someone tells you about something disturbing and terrible and sad. And maybe, if you work with an at-risk population this happens to you repeatedly, and you begin to experience some secondhand or vicarious trauma.

You need to take a moment. You need to live with this thing, alone, outside of the regular busy-ness of life. You need to absorb, as Janeway says.

The same goes when something really wonderful happens to you. Slow down. Savour. Absorb. Wonder at how you got there, what events brought you to this moment. Think about the hard work, the people who helped you, the good that will now come of this moment. Be grateful and proud. Breathe.

Imagine you’re in a car racing down the highway, full of people, everyone talking. And you just ask to be let out, the car pulls over to the shoulder, you open the door, and walk into the ditch, and slip under a fence, and go for a walk into the field. You can just stand in the middle of the field for a while, and think. You look at the sky, and feel the tall grass that brushes your fingertips. You slow down and contemplate, you take it all in, you soak it up, this exact place in which you find yourself standing.

I’m a writer, so it’s a natural instinct to write things down when I find things are getting to me, when I experience something difficult, or joyful. But you find this advice in countless studies.

There’s an article about the PTSD that therapists sometimes experience in The Atlantic from 2015 which I think contains some useful tips, even if the trauma or disturbances you experience might not be as extreme.

Before leaving the office, the counsellors have developed ways to leave their work at work:

“What they could try to control, though, was the exposure that was happening outside of work. When staffers told her that they kept thinking about their clients’ stories even when they were off the clock, Burke and her staff developed a 15-minute decompression exercise to help counselors “drop their worries about clients’ well-being with another worker who will be continuing on.” Before a counselor leaves her shift, she is required to tell someone still on duty all the disturbing things she heard that day, explain why they were disturbing, and list the things she’ll do to try to feel okay about it.”

They found that when there is no one to talk to at the end of a shift, writing down their worries and feelings before they leave work, has the same effect as talking does.

Whenever something extraordinary happens to you, I hope you take a moment. I hope you can set aside time to absorb and to express yourself, whether in painting or writing or photographing. Beauty helps, this much I know.