Unintentional Loitering

It happens everywhere.

In conversation, marriages, jobs– that haphazard hanging around thing that you can’t quite call an activity because there’s nothing active about it.

Ironically, the defining factor for inactivity is not physical.

It’s more like a vacating of mental faculties, a kind of emotional spiritual unplug. It’s entirely possible to be unintentionally loitering in a spin class or while training for a triathlon.

It’s simply an unconsciously chosen choice.

It’s sort of like someone, perhaps God, has hit your hold button.

The feeling is that of being putting temporarily on pause.

The odd part is you don’t really know you are on pause until that ‘someone entity’ has hit play again and then it’s like you’ve blacked out for a while.

‘A while’ can last anywhere from five minutes in a temped, tedious conversation to six months in a failing marriage.

It is unnerving to the instincts but the mind overrides them.

So, there is “something is not quite right’ feeling but it doesn’t make sense that you’re not plugged in when you are fully engaged with the process.

It’s deceiving because there’s the illusion that you are doing something meaningful. Possibly even a big something.

But it’s rote, mechanical– not vested.

There is no authentic you in it.

The meaningful part is missing.

That being said, there is a comforting rhythm in going through the motions that can lull one into a walking trance.

It’s quite similar to walking pneumonia in that you can endure in that disconnected state for quite sometime without realizing it. But it’s highly dangerous.

Waking up can be a bit abrupt.

Abrupt and strangely awkward in that you have to re-enter your self.

There’s an embarrassment to yourself that you could have possibly checked out for that long. And then there’s a whole public freak-out that the world may have been watching you walk around naked.

After these fade there is a kind of empty lost feeling. Where are you? Who exactly are you now? Without the “motions” you’ve been going through?

I have always had trouble sitting in this empty space.

It is devoid of any distractions, unless you fill it up too quickly and miss the entire point. If you don’t though, if you stick with it, the void alternates looking like a big blank canvas and a giant black hole…

And then… something emerges.

Color, shape, texture begins to grow and form inclinations that morph into pure desires that often don’t make sense but come from some kind of inner holy place that cannot be ignored.

Life becomes filled with intention.

And you begin placing yourself where you know you are meant to be.