It was 9:00 AM . The plan for the day and the to-do list were staring at me, demanding a productive day. But my son was away from this world of productive day, busy with a beetle stuck in our window. In that tiny part of world the schedule denied to exist. My son was either as still as the beetle or moving with the speed of the beetle. The only sound in that space an intermittent soft humming. His eyes were glued to that tiny world, oblivious of the clock ticking behind him. In our home, at that moment; a boy and a beetle, sharing a moment of absolute, quiet stillness.
The inner struggle
My mental alarm rang, and before I could hit snooze, the ‘Plan’ jumped up and grabbed me by the neck. Suddenly, my head was shouting: “You are wasting time!”. “What was the point of reading that productivity book?” “Watching a beetle is unproductive—get into some real action!”
The clock loomed over me like a giant, and I felt the weight of guilt for the ‘lost’ twenty minutes. My next time-block became a Ring Master, and like a tame lion, I stepped into the ring of “Action.”
Then, I heard his voice: “Mom, come see my new friend!”
“I saw it,” I replied, with stern voice. “Let it be. We need to finish our work.”
“Mom, it’s on my palm! It tickled at first, but now we’re comfortable. I want to play with him all day!”
My temperature rose. I snapped -“You can play later! You’ve already wasted so much time.”
But he wasn’t in my ring; he was in his own world of wonder. He kept talking- to the beetle, to me, to the air:
“Where did he come from?”
“How long did it take him to reach the window?”
“Did he feel scared when he was stuck?”
“How does he poop?”
“Does he know we are friends?”
I lost it. “Leave it there, finish your breakfast, and get to work! You always waste time.”
Learning in Pause
I finished a chunk of work. While the tea was boiling on the stove I glanced sideways at my son. Suddenly, sense of strange calmness filled me. He was lying on the floor, eye-level with the beetle. He had a deep quite smile, looking at the beetle intensely. I switched off the gas and sat next to him. Without even looking at me he said “Today i got the best gift… a beetle as a friend!”.
It melted my heart, in that moment I already forgot about the clock, the plan and the schedule. We sat and spoke of many things – of beetles and their brave journeys, of our emotions, our world, our vast sense of wonder. We did not produce anything but we created memories.
I was so immersed in our experience that I couldn’t even think to capture it on camera. But it reminded me of a similar moment at the Aarohi campus just a few days ago. We all stood in an enchanted ‘Pause,’ watching a slow, miraculous transformation unfold right before our eyes—a reminder that some of the greatest shifts in life don’t happen because we pushed them, but because there was a space for these moments to happen.
Hustle and bustle might fill our calendars, but a slow day might fill our souls. We are wired to move like clock hands, huffing and puffing toward the next checkbox. We worry so much about what our children are ‘making,’ that we forget to value what they are ‘feeling
There is a hidden, vital learning in the ‘Pause’; in sitting, observing, daydreaming, and simply being without a deadline. While I was busy ‘making’ a day, my son was busy ‘living’ one.
At Aarohi, we pause through reflection. Check this article