The Endless Gap

This poignant day made the gap huge. Former-behaviorist Viktor Frankl said there’s a tiny gap between stimulus and response. When, in that gap, we choose our response, stimulus ceases to control us. In that gap we have freedom. So I have thought of the gap as a place to spring from; a slight pause for thought before action. But some days, the gap is not tiny. Some days it yawns. Some days it spans eternity.

This was such a day. I watched our junior high students as they tried to make sense of the death of a classmate’s mother. Two years she waltzed with cancer. This morning before school, he claimed her as his bride. She is no longer available to those who still love her.

So the kids struggle; and we sit in the gap together. A stimulus most horrid has acted on us. What response will we choose? As we stumble about, trying to find our feet, the gap widens. We’re not coming out the far side with a response. We’re still thinking. We’re still feeling. Maybe in the face of nothing to do, the gap can stretch on past the horizon.