The Pause Button

The pause button is one of the most useful buttons on a remote.

It can suspend a movie's progress for you to go to the bathroom, or nowadays can stop live TV in its tracks.

Pause can halt a CD or an MP3, stopping lyrics and music mid-flow.

Pause freezes a video game so that you can get more chips or a soda.

It gives us a sense of control--we experience the entertainment that we want, when we want it.

It makes entertainment function on our terms.

It may sound funny, but I feel as though I now know how the TV, the DVD, the music, and the game all feel as they are frozen in the moment by a power outside of themselves.

Not so much that I'm frozen in place, but rather that my life has been paused in it's current pattern.

Right now, someone else has the power to decide how, precisely, the next several months are going to play out.

Until that person deigns to share that decision with me, I feel suspended within the flow of my life.

I'm still waiting on a particular phone call, which is overdue and which I'll talk about later, after it actually comes.

The pause button is not so empowering when you're the one being paused.

That phone call is the play button.

I'm more than ready for it to be pressed.

I know this post is nonspecific.  I promise I'll post an explanation and update once I'm off pause.