Following on from a recent blog When is it time for an Emergency Time Out? this is a follow on, inspired by a friend who is amazing, an inspiration and frazzled 100% of the time. She recently sent me an exhausted whatsapp message at stupid o’clock saying she needed to press the Emergency Pause Button.
She is a busy working mum, two little ones under five years old, husband is self employed, she’s really really great at what she does, a couple of promotions in the last two years, she’s highly effective and a hard worker.
She wanted to freeze time, stop the clocks and it reminded of that beautiful poem by WH Auden.
‘Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone’
Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.
Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling on the sky the message He Is Dead,
Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.
He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last for ever: I was wrong.
The stars are not wanted now: put out every one;
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun;
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood;
For nothing now can ever come to any good.
W H Auden
How can you press the emergency pause button? Then how can you successfully press it without the fear and guilt?
I’m not saying I have the answers, I don’t know who does. I do know however that we all need to find a way. A way of taking a pause, without fear and guilt in order to survive.
How do you take your emergency pause button?
What are your coping mechanisms?