Last winter the flu visited our home. It spent 5 days with my son, another five with me, and for good measure, five more days with my partner. Never a welcome house guest, it turned an unwanted visit into a marathon of minor misery. I tended to my son’s illness, gave into my own, and wrestled with my partner’s continued refrains of “I don’t get sick” while she succumbed to the bug.
When our household returned to health, I returned to work and the task of addressing unanswered e-mails and voice mails. I was shocked! More than 200 e-mails and two dozen voice mails had amassed during my downtime. Shock turned to an overwhelming sense of over work then, strangely, to calm. The world hadn’t ended during my absence. Stock markets didn’t crash, homes didn’t get foreclosed on, war hadn’t waged, and the economy didn’t sink into recession during my time away from computer and cell phone. Actually, all those miseries did occur while I was occupied with my family but I do not believe my absence was the cause.
After several days of fury trying to catch up, I gave up with a laugh. No, I thought. It all goes too fast, there is too much here for comfort. So I stopped trying. I have begun turning off my cell phone during my “islands of time” in the car between client visits or teaching assignments. I have begun leaving my cell phone at home when I go out for a walk or to work in my garden. I have taken to checking my e-mails less frequently. I am consciously working at S-L-O-W-I-N-G down. The funny thing is no one, except me, seems to be noticing. The important things are still getting done. If my children are out or away my phone is still handy for immediate access, if needed. I listen, and sing along, to more music in my car. I am writing more at home, studying more for my classes, researching more for better answers to solve client challenges. All in all, getting to slow has been a deliberate, and increasingly conscious, decision to find a gentler pace to 21st century life.
I know you are busy. But my question is, busy doing what? Responding to the immediate or reflecting on the important? Are you present to the moment and the relationships in your life, or preoccupied with the urgency of insistent, but largely inconsequential, demands? Only you can answer that. How can you know? Slow down, get quiet, be focused, be present. The answer is there. You need only take the time to listen.
Be joyous! Let now be beautiful. Blessings, Thomas.
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