Pause: Inhabit the Present Moment
October 27, 2026
“Any place and time that you can make space to just be is the perfect place for Stillness.”
Darcy Luoma
I propose a revolution.
Nothing violent, of course. An inner revolution. An inside job.
Let’s call it The Pause Revolution.
We don't know how to pause. The amount of noise we are exposed to is driving us crazy. If you ever listen to the news you know what I'm talking about.
I don't do news anymore. I haven't for years. That’s a source of noise I choose to stay away from. This is my choice: self-inflicted ignorance. Too much information, too many details. The important headlines find their way to me anyway, and that’s more than enough.
I'm not saying you should do the same. It's your life, you decide what you expose yourself to.
The problem with the current noise is that it's a very clever noise. It knows what you like, it knows what hooks you, and it's designed to hook you so that you keep listening. Which is a problem because it is much more difficult to tune out. When you are surrounded by neutral noise your brain just shuts it off after a while and you stop hearing it.
A friend of mine lives right next to a schoolyard, so children's voices are constantly present. And they’re loud! But when I visit I notice that after a while I just stop hearing it, it becomes part of the background and it's rather easy to ignore.
But when the background noise is especially designed to interest you, to hook and engage you, it is much more difficult to ignore. And that's the kind of noise we are surrounded by nowadays. It's right there always next to us on this little screen we all possess. I could of course silence it, put it away in a faraway room and sit outside to listen to the birds. But the thing is, I know it is right there, full of things that interest me. It beckons to me, it attracts me, it gets me hooked again and again. It’s a sneaky kind of noise.
So, it makes it a lot more difficult to pause. We used to do it a lot, because the world was much quieter. For hundreds of thousands of years, it was easy to just sit and be. Being present was a natural state of things, because there was not a lot pulling us away from the present moment. Just being quiet, without too many stimuli coming in from the outside world, was something normal that happened all the time.
We have this silly image in our collective mind of our ancient ancestors constantly running away from the saber-toothed tiger, while competing for scarce food sources with stronger, faster animals. This is, of course, utter and total nonsense.
We don't stand a chance running away from a saber-toothed tiger. We wouldn’t be here if that were our strategy. Our ancestors lived in an abundant world, and were well equipped for survival. They knew how to deal with their environment. They had sticks and stones and fire. They lived in groups and were able to defend themselves. They wouldn’t run in panic from a saber-toothed tiger, they would chase it away. Our clever forefathers –and mothers– weren’t a fragile prey. They wouldn’t be the first choice of a hungry tiger.
And yes, sometimes a human would be killed by a tiger. That was a possibility. But the story we tell ourselves about why our modern life is so much better and safer because we’ve eliminated all the natural risks so we can live stress-free… exactly. Bull’s crap.
Some people die in car accidents. This doesn’t mean we live in constant fear. They had saber-toothed tigers; we have traffic.
But stress-free? We’re very far from that. We’ve never been more stressed. We’ve never worked as hard as we do today. And worse still, we don’t have the equivalent of sitting around the fire, telling stories or playing drums. We evolved in tribes. Now, the stories we watch and the music we listen to come from a little box. Or a very large one, in the case of modern TVs. It’s a poor substitute for the tribe.
When you sat around the fire, sharing food, stories and warmth, you belonged, you had a place. You could lean into it, rest in it. You could pause, really pause. No to-do list, nothing left undone, no pressing matters that keep you up at night. You could be fully present with your children, with your elders, with your peers.
When we sit in front of our large TV screen at night, there’s no tribe around us. We don’t rest our mind, we numb it. We don’t celebrate another day with gratitude. We fret about tomorrow. Our debt, our obligations, our boss, our list of chores.
I’m talking about a routine day in our lives. Our ancestors had to face hunger, wars, bad weather and natural disasters. We have our share of those things, too. But if I try to imagine a day in their lives, just a peaceful day with nothing out of the ordinary, I can imagine peace. I imagine pause.
When do we have that? Real pause? Pretty much never. It’s not the norm.
So here’s my revolutionary idea. We must create pause. We have to make a personal decision and follow it. We can, and should, step onto a path that goes against the current. It starts with pause.
Pause long enough (a second or two will do) to notice that you have a choice. And then choose. Choose something a little different.
Silence your phone. Put it in a different room. Sit outside for 5 minutes and do nothing. You may hear a bird singing over the traffic noise.
Take three deep breaths. Breathe in. Breathe out.
Turn to look all the way behind you, feel your whole spine rotate, and remember that you have a body. Be grateful for it.
Think of three more things you can be grateful for.
Call a friend. Play with the dog. Try to inhabit the present moment.
That’s what life used to be. That’s what life is.
Pause. And repeat. As often as you can. It’s a practice, and with time, you’ll remember to do it more often. And even enjoy it.
Pause.
I've created some guided pauses for you. Pauses in movement (yes, it works wonderfully).
Join me in Persistent Growth. We do it every day. We hit the pause button for 3 minutes, and dedicate them to moving mindfully.
It doesn't just change the way you move. It changes you.
