This past weekend, I saw one of my favorite Pinter plays, BETRAYAL on none other than The Great White Way. A super hot, star-studded movie-star cast upped the sparkle.
Very early into the play, the computerized set simply shut down. The stage manager’s voice immediately echoed in the dark theatre:
“Thank you everyone for your patience, we are experiencing technical difficulties and the show will resume as soon as possible.”
Having spent many years on stage myself and thereby encountering glitches from stuck stagehands toting couches, to massive barricades bringing singing revolutions to a grinding halt, I knew this could take a bit of time.
It did, about 15 minutes at the first “pause” and then subsequent delays in each scene thereafter.
What was astonishing was how quickly the audience moved to not sit still.
We were just 20 minutes into the play after the 2nd scene, and at the first minor delay, iPhones, Blackberrys, smartphones lit up the theatre, just seconds after the stage manager’s announcement.
Now, this was the Saturday evening of Thanksgiving weekend. Nothing was happening. Families and individuals still in holiday mode, and unless you had a small child at home or were a doctor on call (highly unlikely if you spent $160 for your ticket) there was very little probability that anything from your life would be calling you for immediate attention that happened in the 20 minutes prior.
My companion and I took that time to chat, catch up and I was surprised to see how many people didn’t do just that.
The woman in front of us, rather than speak to her two girlfriends on either side, trolled Facebook zeroing in on pictures of her 50-something friends and their husbands.
The elderly gentleman to my left pulled out his PDA and opted to play a game rather than speak to his wife next to him.
Halfway through the play, when each delay took longer than 30 seconds, a few began to leave. This is the extent of our collective impatience.
My heart went out to the actors, who had an uphill climb between scenes: when there was more than a moment of silence or darkness, the theatre lit up with hundreds of devices, people checking to see what may have changed in the last 12 minutes on a sleepy holiday Saturday: the 1st delay had conditioned the audience to lose trust and patience.
My cohort, who is also a dedicated student and has countless times heard me lecture about media and mindfulness, not to mention bitch about how hard it is to find a Midtown or Midwestern restaurant that doesn’t have TVs blaring at the bar, mused,
“My God, it’s true. No one knows how to just ‘be’ anymore.”
All in all, the show ran about 40 minutes long. Most of those were short internal pauses. People were free to get up, go to the bathroom, grab a sippy cup of wine if you could talk the bartender downstairs into giving you one.
40 minutes wasted on checking into a world that wasn’t there. That 40 minutes could have been time better spent getting to know your companions, sit quietly and contemplate the play you just spent a nice chunk of change to experience, or gee, justrelax on a holiday Saturday.
Distraction is just distraction, or running from our suffering. Even running from boredom is running from suffering. To just sit and be where we were could have been a glorious opportunity for internal growth or sidy-by-side connection.
Oh, and look, I am just as guilty. No doubt. But each time we make the choice to lean into the presence and present of what is, it deepens the wellspring of our groundedness in Reality. Anxiety, insomnia, any one of dozens of psychological disorders could be alleviated if we just made the conscious choice to sit still. I’m not even saying formal meditation: just shut up, and be there.
Every moment of stillness we choose is like a deposit into the bank of future clarity, bliss and auspiciousness. And every moment we distract, we burrow deeper into maya, conditioned existence. We’re literally pulling the wool over our own eyes and deadening our senses to the brilliant, True experience of Life. Not only in that moment, in future moments.
So a little challenge for us: the next time you are somewhere and you have an unexpected few minutes, in a cab, on line at the post office, that friend is late for dinner, try something revolutionary: do nothing. Just sit there.
First, notice how you grab for that phone/iPad/book when you have a second. Every. Single. Time. If you’ve ever been somewhere off the grid, or on a retreat, or even left your phone somewhere for a day, you start to realize how we have conditioned ourselves to reach for it. Remarkable, considering that mobile phones only began being widely used some 20 years ago.
Second, after you notice you are reaching for the phone, consider letting it just sit there. Even if it’s just for a minute. Just sit there.
If you’re not used to doing this, it will be super uncomfortable at first. So, notice how wack that is– you can’t sit still for a minute, babes. What is that??
“I mean, don’t forget the earth’s about five thousand million years old, at least. Who can afford to live in the past?” – Harold Pinter
Only when we open ourselves up to life as it is, can anything enter into the void of that stillness. If we’re constantly distracting ourselves, we leave no room for magic. That’s the true betrayal. Choose to leave room for magic. One minute at a time.
