There is more to life than increasing its speed.
— ATTRIBUTED TO MAHATMA GANDHI
Sometimes I feel like we are all living in the movie Speed, trapped on a bus that cannot slow down. The pace of our lives just keeps going faster and faster until we have to struggle with all our might just to keep up.
The computer you just ordered is obsolete by the time it reaches your door, speed-dating gives you one minute to decide if you like someone, you can get married in Las Vegas without the awful inconvenience of having to step out of your car, books that you once had to go to a store to buy show up on your Kindle screen with one click, and the Chinese just deployed a train that hurtles at 302 miles per hour. Meanwhile the earth is spinning at 1,000 miles per hour, orbiting the sun at 67,000 miles per hour. Stillness, it turns out, is pure illusion!
You would think that increasing the speed of life would increase the quality of life. Yet it is not so. When 1957 pollsters asked a population, “Are you happy?” about 60 percent of respondents reported that they were happy. When a recent poll posed the same question, about 57 percent said they were happy. We are going everywhere much faster, except toward happiness.
Slow down and everything you are chasing will come around and catch you.
— attributed to John De Paola
The speed at which you act is a function of the distance you perceive between where you are and where you want to be. The more you believe that “there” is better than “here,” the more you hurry to close the gap. Yet if you eased up on the throttle, you might find that what you are rushing to get to is already here. Then you won’t have to hurry to get there. I sometimes fantasize about producing a bumper sticker: GOING NOWHERE FASTER WON’T GET YOU SOMEWHERE.
The ability to move faster does help. Given the choice between driving from New York to Los Angeles in five days and flying there in five hours, I usually take the plane. Yet as I gaze down onto the Grand Canyon from 35,000 feet, I recall cherished road trips on which I sat for a whole day with my feet dangling over the edge of the great abyss, staring with utter awe into a gap that mules could fathom, but not my mind. Those cross-country trips took longer, but showed me endless fields of sunflowers, introduced me to fascinating back-country people I never would have met on an airplane, and gave me a reprieve from jet lag. If you’ve never done it, try driving across America. Road trek can be just as wondrous as Star Trek.
I live near the world-famous Hana Highway, one of the most scenic drives in the world. This spectacular Maui road winds through lush rain forests, pierces the hem of stunning waterfalls, and overlooks steep drop-offs with breathtaking vistas of rugged lava-rock shorelines. The 30-mile ribbon measures but two thin lanes wide (sometimes less), traversing an astounding 620 curves and 54 one-lane bridges. The reward for staying with the drive—thrilling for some and challenging for others—is a snapshot of paradise most people remember for a lifetime.
If you were to ride the Hana Highway all the way to the tiny town after which it is named, you might be surprised to find but a sleepy village with a couple of grocery stores, a gas station, and an understated hotel. Upon arrival, some tourists throw their hands up and grunt, “I made that whole nerve-racking trip for this?” They do not realize that the purpose of the trip is not to get to Hana. The purpose of the trip is the ride.
Two types of drivers cruise the Hana Highway: those who are busy getting there, and those who are busy being there. The average speed possible, due to the narrowness of the road and the one-lane bridges, is 20 miles per hour. You can’t go much faster even if you try. The Hana Highway is in itself a meditation and a message: The slower you go, the more you see. Some rides are meant to get you places. Some rides are the places.
Metaphorically speaking, rides that oblige you to slow down are an invitation to enjoy a view you might otherwise overlook. People who lose their jobs or are forced by illness to stay home or in bed, parents of children with disabilities, and airline travelers facing a delay often report that their challenge is but a veiled blessing or lesson. They are forced to be present where they are, an experience they did not know they were missing. Some people report that their setback was the best thing that ever happened to them. The setback was actually a setup.
Living at the Speed of Choice
If you think you have to go fast all the time and don’t realize that slower is an option, you don’t have a choice. But you do. You can choose to find enough here rather than when you get there. Or with your present partner instead of your fantasy lover. Or with this job instead of that one. Or with the house you own instead of the one you want. I’m not saying you have to stay with your partner, job, or house. I’m just saying that you can.
Sometimes the willingness to find your good where you stand is the prerequisite to moving to “better.” As long as you need to go, you have to stay. When you can stay, you are free to go. It’s a paradox—your point of power. As long as you are attached to one option or the other, you are stuck. When you can hold both alternatives simultaneously, you are free.
Sometimes I have a hard time getting away from my computer. It is what some people would call a “soft addiction.” There always seems to be just one more e-mail to answer, another Facebook friend request to confirm, another recommended YouTube video to watch, a final sentence I need to polish on my article. Some little devil crouching behind the screen is grabbing me by the neck, shouting, “Don’t leave now! You’re not done yet!”
In a Twilight Zone episode, a distraught fellow could not tear himself away from a slot machine. Wherever he turned, there was the machine, egging him on to feed it just one more quarter. Perhaps the personal computer is a new incarnation of that slot machine. You put lots of coins in, and once in a while you get a few out. Is it really worth it?
Sometimes Dee finds me sitting at the computer long after I said I would join the family. “Step away from the computer, sir,” she commands in the gravelly voice of a Highway Patrol officer. At that point I know she’s right, and I admit it, which pleases her to no end.
There are two ways to get what you want: (1) you can manipulate your environment, or (2) you can manipulate your attitude. Sometimes you can manipulate your environment. Always you can manipulate your mind. If you can’t rearrange your external furniture, then find a way to come to peace with where you are or what you have to do. Contentment does not depend on stuff, but ideas. Stuff is outside you; ideas are inside you. Other people might control the world around you, but only you control the world within you. Ultimately ideas are more powerful than people, things, or events. So regardless of what the news tells you, you really do have power over your life.
The most self-defeating thing you can do is to take action with divided intentions. If you are doing something while resisting, resenting, or complaining about it, you are ripping yourself off, along with everyone else involved. Nothing is more annoying than someone doing something and kvetching and whining as they do it. Either do something with a whole heart or don’t do it. If you agree to do something, then really do it. If you don’t agree to do it, then really don’t do it. Be total.
I’m probably not going to slow down the world by suggesting that we all take it a little easier, breathe a little more as we go, and consider whether running “there” is really better than enjoying “here.” But I can make my world more peaceful and happier by taking my time, and so can you. You are not in charge of the world, but you are in charge of your world.
A friend of mine is a lawyer in a large, successful firm. When she redecorated her office with a mauve color scheme, a feng shui fountain, and an aromatherapy diffuser, her colleagues made fun of her. But then they started to come to her office to hang out. “It feels really nice in here,” they would comment, and then stay until she had to ask them to leave because she had work to do!
You may not be the boss of the firm, but you are the boss of your space and your experience. You have the right and power to move at a pace that feels good and works for you, no matter what pace others move at, or what they would choose for you. In the end all choice lies in your domain, and until you exercise it, you will feel disempowered. Choose consciously, and the power you have diverted to the outer world will return to you. Then, at peace with yourself and your choices, you will inspire others to make choices that nourish them.
Ultimately there is nowhere to get to. If you could fully be here, you would not need to get there. But—back to the paradox—the more you can be here, the more you can get there. Going nowhere faster won’t get you somewhere. Fully embracing here might reveal to you that you have already arrived at the there you were rushing toward.