10.07.2008

Selah.

One of my very favorite words is Selah, if only for its pure nature as untranslatable. It's a word that cannot be defined clearly, because we have lost the concept of it so far as to not even have an equivalent in our language. Roughly, it's assumed, it means a pause, usually in music, to contemplate the importance of what has been said. It occurs, untranslated, throughout the Biblical Psalms.

I'm thinking about it today because I'm thinking about listening -- not listening exactly, but pausing, in as far as pausing also means listening.

It's like I told my grams this morning, I'm trying real hard right now to remember that I don't know everything and I'm not in charge of the world for a reason.

Sometimes life just pounds and pounds and pounds. It pounds so hard for so long that you just don't understand how you're still carrying on. And my usual response is to just tuck my chin and barrel through. Don't pay attention, don't absorb -- just get through it. It's not a bad method, if I do say so myself.

But sometimes I think it might be better to just fucking pause for a minute, try to figure out if the universe isn't trying to tell you something. Let it get to you, for just a minute. My fear in that is that if it gets to you for one minute, it might all get to you. But sometimes you reach a point where all the running around trying not to look anything square in the face just starts to feel like madness.

Lauryn Hill: Selah

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