A Pause

We are used to thinking that a pause is the time when nothing happens. And so we fill every free moment with the feeling that something is happening. But even in the Torah pauses were given, because it is not enough to encounter something great. One must give it time to enter. Without space between one passage and the next, between one experience and another, between one thought and another, things pass through us without becoming part of us. The pause allows the mind to understand, the will to receive, and one's character traits to change. It does not stop life; rather it prepares life to absorb the good that has already reached it. A vacation grants us free time, but the question is not only what we fill it with. Sometimes it is right to leave in it a little empty space as well. Not to rush immediately to the next thing, but to reflect on what we have been through, on what we have received, and on what we wish to carry onward. To give space.