Finding Your Primal Pause
Silence, Stillness, and Sensitive Systems
What went through the mind of a human before there were words?
Feeling the green leather of a leaf, no words appeared: dinner, I am hungry, I want this.
Certainly no: What other leaves look fresh at the grocery store today?
Or: Should I go to the other store?
I don’t know what it was like to be human without words, but I imagine there was: disappointment, relief, craving, awe, satisfaction, fear.
There was also silence.
Did the echo of a bird ring repeatedly through the early human mind, going on for days?
Did the brain organize and track little bits of information, piecing together a master map like mine does not when I manage my work and my household? There is no more milk in the fridge. Add milk to the grocery list. Dentist at 10 o’clock. Grubs in the first meadow. Three months ago, fresh grass below the ridge. Morning sun was pink.
How was information processed and stored? Or more specifically, was it a constant process?
We’ll probably never know what went on in an early human mind, but I imagine a time when mental chatter was less. Without words, fewer thoughts were needed.
Life flowed from one present moment to the next.
The nervous system bathes in immersion. It likes to be consumed, abjectly engrossed in existence.
Pauses, and times of rest, were potent capsules of awakening for the nervous system that couldn’t think. Full of silence, these moments didn’t ask for anything more.
That kind of rest is for integration, and it’s something we don’t do enough of now.
Silence and stillness have become the antithesis of modern culture. We are asked to move, to produce, to process, to act, and to prepare — to live into the future. If the original way of nature used to relish rest, what does that say about what we’ve created?
It’s a beautiful thing, to witness the perpetual motion of a spinning ADHDer. Oh how they can fly.
The things they can do!
Truly nothing wrong in doing, this conversation is not black and white. Action is not preferred to silence, and silence is not superior to action.
But have you ever seen an ADHDer burn themselves to the ground with exhaustion?
The world before words would teach us that to rest is imperative to creation.
Don’t like sitting still? Don’t like the quiet?
My guess is you haven’t found the way you enjoy these things yet. Can you think of a moment when you curled up in a ball and felt like for just one second the world was at peace? Can you remember a time, no matter how fleeting, when you were satisfied to just stop and listen?
It might have been on a beach, or under water, or by a fire at night.
Don’t write off this natural birthright just because you can’t sit still in a chair at an office or on a meditation cushion.
What is your primal connection to silence and stillness?
The nervous system needs regulation, and no matter how hard you work at self-care, you can’t achieve inner peace without pause.
When I take a break during the day and lie on my heated blanket in a quiet room, the buzz in my brain starts to buzz less. The momentum begins to settle. The panicky feeling I have of running out of time vanishes into, “This is the only moment.”
Pause and let yourself feel alive.
Pause in a way that is silent for you. Pause in a way that is still for you. Pause with music, or pause while walking. But either way, create pause.
Tell me what it’s like for you to be still.
Tell me how you feel about silence.
I long to know.