Wilfred Owen was a well known poet around the time of World War I. He wrote:
“Light many lamps and gather round his bed. Lend him your eyes, warm blood and will to live. But death replied, ‘I choose him.’ So he went, and there was silence in the summer night. Silence and safety, and the veils of sleep. And then, far away, the thudding of the guns.”
There’s something haunting in his words —a contrast between the quiet and what comes next. Silence before the storm. A pause before the battle.
In a privileged place during a privileged time, most of us living in the United States have never experienced war the way Owen did, bust most of us know the feeling of standing on the edge of something hard, knowing that there is an “effectual struggle” ahead. Sometimes, that moment right before we have to move forward can feel eerily still. If we’re not careful, we might mistake that stillness for defeat.
Crossroads and Course Corrections
A few years ago, I found myself in one of those moments where a pause felt a lot like losing.
It started like a lot of my stories do, with a run. I don’t run much anymore, but when I did, I ran with the same group of guys for years. We’ve had plenty of conversations over the years that go well beyond pace and mileage.
On one particular morning, one of my friends and I were running alone, and that morning was something different entirely.
My friend brought up an article I’d written, The Thing About Crossroads, and we started talking about pivotal moments in our lives — times when we’ve had to make decisions that would change our trajectory. He told me about his teenage years, about a moment when he stood outside a church, ready to walk away, only to hear a quiet but unmistakable whisper:
“If you leave now, you may never come back.”
It stopped him. He turned around, walked back inside, and that decision shaped the rest of his life.
I started sharing my own stories. I told him about my kids and their struggles, most of them commonplace for kids of that age. I told him about one of the most profound defining moments I had, sitting at Grandma Dee’s kitchen table, a crossroads I hadn’t thought about in years in years.
And then, without warning, I broke.
I stopped running. The weight of everything I’d been carrying hit me all at once. Standing on a canal trail behind houses near my home, I sobbed while my friend stood beside me, his hand on my shoulder.
For a brief moment, I was embarrassed. I hadn’t planned for this. I hadn’t scheduled an emotional breakdown into my morning run.
But I let it happen.
I let the weight press down on me. I let myself pause.
Then I kept going.
The Difference Between a Pause and Surrender
We have a tendency to believe that progress only looks like movement; always pushing forward; always doing more. Yet most of us know instinctively that’s not how life works. Sometimes, the most important moments come when we’re not moving or doing or trying to be anything other than what we are in that moment.
Dylan Thomas wrote:
“Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.”
Yet sometimes, a fight is not what we need. The soldier in Owen’s poem doesn’t fight when death calls. He doesn’t rage or resist. He just goes. The battle still rages on in the distance.
But we’re not talking about death. We’re not talking about the vicissitudes of old age. We’re talking about rest.
Not every pause is surrender.
Stopping to reassess, to grieve, or to feel the weight of the moment don’t mean giving up. They mean acknowledging where we are so that when we move again, we’re moving in the right direction.
Crossroads almost never come with flashing signs. Sometimes, often, they look like sitting at a kitchen table, realizing you’re not where you need or want to be. Sometimes they look like standing on a trail, catching your breath as tears run down your face.
And sometimes, they look like silence before the thudding of the figurative guns.
The fight’s not over until it’s over, but that doesn’t mean you have to charge into battle before you’re ready. It’s okay to take the pause and gather your strength. Then, when it’s time, move forward again.
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