Hurry

January 19, 2015

Greetings from a hasty life,

When you get a Parent’s License, you are given a list of phrases to memorize.  Here are a few on the final exam:

“Because I said so.”

“Don’t make me come in there.”

“Stop jumping on the couch or Santa will not come this year.”

“Who left these lights on?  It looks like an airport in here.”

and

“Hurry up!”

Children move at a pace that is natural to them.  Their awareness of the pressure of the clock and the demands of the world’s schedule is vague and slippery and dissolves each night in sleep.

We set the example; we show them how important it is to be industrious, to hustle while we hurry.  We tell them how we admire others who are busy, accomplished.  We praise them when they fill their days with things to do, like sports and music and extra education and volunteering.  They respond by waking when they are rested, and moving as if they owned the world, and adapting to whatever comes with a playful joy.

We try to wear that off them in school with rigorous activities and strict class periods punctuated by Pavlovian bells to enforce the rush.  And when summer comes, or the long breaks at the holidays, they revert to their natural state.

Eventually the world begins to win.  It says “Hurry up!” and our children become their parents and grandparents.  It is a life of schedules and appointments and days of choices and only so many hours to get everything done so that we can be ready to do the next day’s things to be done.

Life conspires to enforce the hurry.  Socks are missing.  Traffic snarls. Alarms are muted. The unforeseen intersects with us, chaos created by billions of hurrying people ripples out in to the world and swamps our plans and makes us hurry to compensate.

Sometimes we exacerbate our hurry.  Poor planning. Over-committing.  Forgetting.   Procrastination.  Our best laid plans are thwarted by sleep or habit or faulty memory or a broken shoelace we never got around to replacing.

Sometimes I have found that these circumstances bring something better out of me.  No time to waste: act at optimum efficiency.  Think, decide, act. Repeat.  Get to the next block as fast as possible.  I thrive on the hectic. 

But the hectic is not a compassionate life partner.  Haste makes waste.  Not just because of mistakes born out of going too fast, but because of the toxins that are created in its wake. Fear, panic, anxiety are the ingredients to the hectic life.  Hurrying through a hectic day creates stress, and the body resents it.

In my travels I have found groups of people, whole cultures even, who do not understand the hurry.  In the south.  On Indian reservations.  In Mexico.  In Hawaii.  They all have their version of this: “Oh, you’ll get used to it; the people here are on Rez time.”

With some time in these environments, I am reminded that some things that should not be hurried: Reading.  Eating.  Listening to music.  Conversations.  Personal reflection. Creating.  Enough time away from the hustle of my ordinary day and I begin to see the hurry for what it is.

But I can’t carry these places with me forever, and the world awaits.  I can’t be late. 

I look for a better example to follow, and I am lost until I think of my children.  Those little people who become us; we, who were at one time, them.

I am not naïve enough to think I can behave like a five year old and still function in an adult world.  But I sense the balance I seek is in what they do best, which is to listen to their natural inclination. 

Strangely, running is not hurrying.  I am often rushing to fit in a run, and as soon as I am on the road, the feeling of hurry leaves me.  Just yesterday morning, the day stretched ahead of me full of lists and potential, pulling at me before the sun came up, the hurry piling up before I could finish my coffee.  I responded by lacing up, and running.

In that excellent hour I found what I was looking for.  I put the rush in its place, saw it for what it was.  In the eternal scheme of things, none of what drives the hurry will matter much.  I ran along the wet roads and sorted things in my head, and put them away for the moment, to be dealt with in good time. 

I ran along the wet roads at the pace I chose.  The hurry unraveled in me, and the longer I ran the closer I got to my true age, my true nature.  I became what my children have tried to teach me by example for most of their lives. 

Today I will make time to thank them.

Hope this finds you dawdling,

David