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Howdy partners, I want to write you tonight about something I have grown to know. It is a paradox. And it is this: living requires pause. To see. To appreciate. To reassess. To live now and to go on living, requires pause. Linda Gregg, poet and longtime partner of Jack Gilbert (my favorite poet), once said something of him that struck and stuck with me: “all Jack ever wanted to know was that he was awake—that the trees in bloom were almond trees—and to walk down the road to get breakfast. He never cared if he was poor or had to sleep on a park bench.” Jack’s poetry and that idea — that all he ever wanted to be was awake — pointed to what pause is and helped to make pause important to me. When I pause, I let go of my focus, that useful-but-limiting frame around my awareness. I open up. I look around. Rather than seeing and feeling what I think, I stop thinking to see and feel. In this way, to here and now, a pause wakes me up. Pause is particularly important for me these days. I’ve got a lot on my plate and can get on a roll. I get going, going, going — and I might get a lot done — but I get so going that I miss much of what’s in front of me. Sometimes even forget where I’m going, why I’m going, and how I love to go. If I don’t pause, I can get into a state of frenetic productivity, missing everything minus my myopic focus on a couple of things I feel I need to get done. Luckily, all it takes is a pause to stop the go, go, go. I pause in a variety of durations and ways: Yesterday, after pedaling my bike home from the gym, I paused at twilight for perhaps a minute, just standing in the driveway, staring at a sliver of moon floating among a sky electric blue. Thanks to an index card taped to my wall that gets a tick mark each time I meditate, I’ve paused to meditate most nights this year. The moments of deepest pause within those meditations feel like a big, billowy parachute softly stretching as it slows my go, go, go mind. Four weekends ago, I drove my old Honda Element home on wheels out to the desert (partly in search of a dance floor), but most importantly, to pause and spend an evening far from the city in stillness, reading old journals, and reassess where I’m going, why I’m going, and how I’d love to go. Late Night Letters like this one have become a monthly ritual in which to pause, reflect, and (as I smiled at reading in an old journal in my Element) “channel” some essence of my previous month’s experience into words. Back in 2013, I paused the pursuit of medical school for 76 days to pedal a bicycle across the USA with my brother. That pause became the end of one way of life and the beginning of another.
It sounds funny, but pause seems to be one of the best ways to not only see what I’m missing and orient my life, but to live life fully. With this in mind, I’d like to extend an invitation to my favorite, collaborative, six-day-five-night pause of the year this September 19th - 24th: WONDER WANDER 2025. This will be the sixth WONDER WANDER. I make no money from hosting it. I do it purely for the experience, the strangers that become the best of friends, and the insights that come from a pause on life at home for six days, “emptying my cup,” and filling said cup with experiences and teachings intuitively led by beautiful and rad others. If that sounds like the sort of pause you’d like, need, or could use this September, find all the info below, and I hope you’ll apply. With love & stoke, Ethan
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