Advice I Will Give My Girls

It was a writing day. I tethered myself to the wall in the basement, plugging in, making deals with myself: Focus for three hours and you can get a pedicure. Do it. And I puttered around a bit, checking Facebook and Twitter, publishing blog comments, and then I did it. I focused. I wrote.

And then, at some point, I came up for air. I hit a wall in my story or something one of my characters did made me pause and this is always incredibly cool - to realize that my characters affect me, that they are real to me, that the things they do are not fully within my control. Anyway, I pulled my headphones from my ears and listened. I was surrounded by students. Students studying for exams of some kind. Three women next to me flipped madly through their binders of notes and I realized that they were talking about pregnancy. They were studying pregnancy and this made me smile and part of me wanted to tap a shoulder and say something. I know about that. I've been there three - no, four - times. But I didn't. I didn't say anything.

I sat there and I listened. I wasn't yet ready to dive back in, to keep writing. But I didn't do the other things I tend to do when faced with time. I didn't hop over to Facebook or Twitter. I didn't pull out my phone.

I just stopped.

I just thought.

I stopped and I thought. I thought about thinking, about thought. About how rarely I do this. Stopping just to think, to consider, to ask. I thought about how quickly I move, we move, through our moments and our days, from A to B to C and beyond, back to A. I thought about the hegemony of schedules and lists and plans. I thought about how strict we are with our selves, with our stories.

And suddenly it didn't really matter what I was thinking about. What mattered, what struck me, was that I actually stopped and looked around and listened. What mattered is that I thought.

When my girls are older and come to me for advice, I will tell them to do just this. I will tell them that busy-ness should only have so much purchase on existence, that there will always be something to do, to check, to accomplish, but that there is a distinct majesty in just stopping and thinking.

And if they don't come to me and ask me these things, I will tell another person to do this. To stop. To think. About whatever. Anything really.

{That someone? Me.}

Do you ever just stop to think? How often do you find yourself actually thinking about thinking? What's one piece of advice you will pass on to your kids or future kids? Do you buy it when people say that their fictional characters "have a mind of their own"? Do you think we are all victims of a self-inflicted plague of "busy-ness"?