Refraining

From Pema Chodron in When Things Fall Apart, this on “refraining”:

“Refraining is one of those uptight words that sound repressive.  Surely, alive, juicy, interesting people would not practice refraining.  Maybe they would sometimes refrain, but not as a lifestyle….  It’s the quality of not grabbing for entertainment the minute we feel a slight edge of boredom coming in.  It’s the practice of not immediately filling up spaces just because there’s a gap.”

I do that a lot, try to fill in the gaps.  In conversation (no one likes that awkward silence), in my calendar (productivity, “the idle mind is the devil’s workshop,”…), the empty bookshelf shelf in my office that empty spot in my garden.  A lot of time and effort is spent filling in the gaps, as if there is something inherently wrong with a gap.  Yet it occurs to me (or perhaps I should say, it seems $%*#@ obvious on reflection) that the gaps are where the peace is.  Chodron notes: “It’s a transformative experience to simply pause instead of immediately filling up the space.”  Maybe the gap, the space, needs to be filled in, maybe not.  Maybe someone else will handle it, or not.  This is where the refraining comes in.