HANG IN THE BALANCE
There are established practices for cultivating single-mindedness or one-pointedness. There are antidotes for countering the tendency to dither or doubt, for steadying one’s resolve against the unsettling effects of procrastination, of restlessness and indecision. Dithering is all too often conceived as a hindrance or deficiency, a symptom of commitment or confidence lacking. Energies scatter in multiple directions in the absence of an identified purpose — concentration wavers from a want of focus, clear and determined. Yet etymologically, dither means to tremble or to quake, to vacillate, vibrate. A creative species of dithering strives to acknowledge and keep the range of options alive; not fixing things too quickly or easily but allowing time for mulling things over. Ponder — from pendere, to weigh up, to hang in the balance. Allow time, for under the pressure of time constraints dithering can become panicky and breathless. Grounding practices first seek to stabilise or settle, creating the conditions of receptivity and readiness from which to then venture into more generatively unstable states. Dithering as a mode of openness to the manifold options within a given situation. Dithering as attraction to the possibilities of many things.
From Emma Cocker, How Do You Do? (Nottingham: Beam Editions, 2023)