Pausing for Thought

Pausing for Thought ©

By

Michael Casey

I’m sat here this Saturday morning with my various aches and pains throbbing, it’s my life, I wish it wasn’t so forgive me for being repetitious, so what shall I talk about today? I paused and looked out the window on this dull and damp Saturday, a lone car passes by, even the cars feel the gloom. So I pause, and then I have an idea, I’ll write about Pause, not paws, though that could be a diversion into cat territory. So off I’ll go and in an hour you’ll al be reading this.

Yes, it really is as simple as that, I think of a theme and away I go. Now this morning I spotted Spain looking at my site, so hola to the, did I tell you about my Barcelon trip in 1999? That was a pause in my life, JG whom I mentioned in an earlier piece had said do some travelling, all I was doing was working and visiting my dad every single day in the old people’s home, so I listened to JG and did a bit of travelling.

A pause or break in your life can give you a better perspective, it can help you see things differently. You are not that gerbil in a cage going around and around to the Kylie song. A pause helps you think, avoid mistakes, like buying a house at the top of a hill when you have a heart condition. Or buying a house near a brothel when you are overly religious, though they say opposites attract.

Whatever you are doing, take a break, pause for thought. Especially if you are planning a wedding, or just coupling without being a couple. Stop and think, no I don’t want to do that, to sign this contract or that contract, to follow the herd and give in to peer pressure. Thinking, pausing is the most important thing you ever do in your life. At a market the guy hands things out and his patter is so good, only a quid for the mystery packet so everybody has one, thinking it has a great bargain inside. If you have any doubts you can have your money back says the man. Nobody does, he will make a killing, but one lone voice in the crowd does ask for his money back. That was my brother, the others, they got ripped off.

More than ever in today’s fast world you have to stop and pray, or have a quiet 17 pints of Stella Artois, whatever is your form of prayer or preferred form of Quiet. Then make a decision, its not a pair of jeans you can send back with the courier, hello to our courier, he’s like Lenny Henry’s brother, warm and funny. But I digress. There are consequences to all our actions, so pause for thought. I won’t bother tidying up, my boyfriend will, in the end he leaves you are moves in with his fellow road sweeper, you didn’t even notice he was really gay. You just loved him because the flat was always tidy, it was like living in a hotel. But now he is gone, he has ran off with a bloke, and your flat is just a tip.

Food is important, I’m enjoying the quality food we switched to at my daughter’s bequest, just a different loaf of bread makes such a difference. By pausing as you shop and buying this instead of that your fatty levels can go down, not mine, you yes you in Spain reading this today. It doesn’t take too much time to look at the traffic light symbols we have on food, and it could save your heart. I speak from experience now.   

If only I had thought is another common expression, results matter  and in today’s world it is Volley and Return, Wimbledon is on hence that expression. But a couple of seconds thought do save the day. When you are a parent, or standing in the foyer of CPNEC you should be looking all around you for danger or for things to do. Being proactive does make a difference, your gerbil or your baby is still alive because you tidied up all those little plastic bags when you came home from that shopping trip.  

If ever you go to Lourdes on pilgrimage as well as the holy stuff there is the cafe life, watch and see the waiters descend like locusts to tidy up, il march bien as the head waiter said to me. They think about keep the pilgrims catered for and how to stop big pauses in trade. Would you go to a cafe that was so messy? So they are highly skilled at making it march bien.

Few of us get miracles in our lives, my dad’s survival over 20 years ago. Me meeting a professional model in Czech Republic in 1998, while I was stopping with a gay doctor, she came to Birmingham and I taught her English for a month, everybody thought it was a miracle. Then the next year I met a Shanghai girl who became my wife. Having 2 daughters, the miracle of life itself.

Some of these things happened because I paused my life, I stopped and had a rest, a break. Now my life is one big pause you could say, punctuated by pain which ebbs and flows. But as I look back at my life, at the pauses intentional and unintentional, I can say I’m happy that its brought me to where I am now. I am the fool on a hill, the undiscovered writer, and it may only be when I pause at my end  that you all pause and discover me. So pause you own lives and discover somebody important, not me, just pause and discover yourselves.