Conversations · Reading Journey
On the Pause Between Texts
Come read with me — quietly, slowly, deeply
You can find more essays in this series in the Conversations archive
December always brings a particular kind of stillness to my reading.
Not the stillness of finishing something triumphantly.
Not the neatness of conclusions or summaries.
But the quieter pause that comes after something meaningful has already done its work — when another book could be opened, but isn’t. Not yet.
The book just stays closed beside me.
Not finished.
Not abandoned.
Just… there.
And I notice myself lingering longer in the space after a book, rather than reaching immediately for the next one.
The stack beside the chair doesn’t grow the way it does through the year. If anything, it thins, then lies dormant for a while. The urgency to add more softens — not because there is nothing left to read, but because something else begins to matter more.
Orientation.
For much of my life, reading felt like an accomplishment. A kind of accumulation. I grew up around people who loved ideas and language, who moved easily in the world of books.
Mud on my legs.
Sun on my back.
The world felt wide and physical and alive.
Reading felt quiet. Still. Almost like stopping — like missing out on the real living happening around me.
My mother never tried to change this about me. She understood people instinctively — perhaps because her life was shaped by care, by nursing, by service.
She had a quiet gift. She could see where I was in life and place a book into my hands — beside my bed, under the Christmas tree — that met me there. Me
Not as instruction.
Not as pressure.
But as companionship.
As support.
As love made visible.
She always chose them well, though I often only realised that much later.
Those books offered insight when I needed understanding.
Direction when I felt unsure.
Language when something in me had no words yet.
That is how I learned to love reading — not as performance, but as orientation.
Not as achievement.
Not as identity.
But as something that kept me company while I figured things out — something that helped me understand what I didn’t yet know how to express.
And slowly, reading became less about performing, achieving, or acquiring — and more about inhabiting. Less about moving forward, and more about learning how to stand where I already was.
Over time, I began to notice that the most important work didn’t always happen while the book was open.
It happened afterwards.
In the days when a sentence lingered. In the moments when a question refused to resolve. In the way a thought quietly altered how I listened, or judged, or paid attention.
This is the pause between texts.
The space where meaning continues without new input.
Where thinking is allowed to settle into the body.
Where understanding ripens without being pushed.
Modern life doesn’t make much room for this kind of pause.
We are encouraged to move quickly from one thing to the next — one article, one post, one idea, one opinion. Even reading can become another form of motion: something to complete, to consume, to keep up with. And that pressure has only built with the decades.
In my twenties, there was energy in that. Hunger, too. But there was also a subtle pressure: to keep moving, to keep up, to keep going.
Now more than ever, we are urged to react, respond, progress. Even reading risks becoming another performance — a display of pace rather than depth.
For years, I didn’t read much at all. When I left the city, I left its pressures, expectations, and habits behind. My attention returned to living — sand between my toes, salt on my lips.
I was learning again how to live inside my body — and the questions followed.
Google and blogs offered more noise than clarity, more questions than answers. And so, quietly, I returned to old, faithful books. Over time, something shifted.
I remembered there is another way to read
One that treats leisure not as escape, but as ground.
One that understands attention as precious, and easily lost.
One that allows thinking to deepen rather than multiply.
This kind of reading doesn’t announce itself.
It happens in ordinary evenings.
In tired seasons.
In snatches of time borrowed from busy days.
While hanging washing.
While walking.
While sitting with a cup of tea and no plan.
It belongs to people who read not because they have plenty of leisure, but because they seek orientation — because life has outpaced explanation, and something quieter is needed to remember what matters.
As the year closes, I find myself less interested in what comes next, and more attentive to what is still working in me from what has already been read.
Most years don’t resolve.
They orient.
They leave us facing in a slightly truer direction, even if the path ahead remains unclear.
And perhaps that is enough.
For now, I’m content to stay in the pause. To let the reading already done continue its slow, patient work. To trust that thinking does not end when the book closes.
And perhaps the question, as a year turns, is not what comes next —
but what is already shaping us, quietly, daily, repeatedly.
Not as an accusation.
Not as a task.
Just as a question worth living with.
Come read with me — quietly, slowly, deeply.
Old book on the table.
Modern life outside the window.
The Great Conversation continues — and you are not only invited, but needed.
Welcome.