Stop

“There is a pervasive form of contemporary violence

 to which the idealist most easily succumbs: activism and overwork.

 The rush and pressure of modern life are a form,

 perhaps the most common form, of its innate violence.

 To allow oneself to be carried away by a multitude of conflicting concerns,

 to surrender to too many demands, to commit oneself to too many projects,

 to want to help everyone in everything, 

is to succumb to violence.”

- Thomas Merton

 

This is a painful one. I have no expectation that anything is going to change. Writing about slowing down is a lost cause. I’ve been writing about the dangerous pace of life since 2005. The Slow Lane got its name from the perception that arose in me, because my stroke stopped me, and revealed a world that I had missed in my daily rush. If that hadn’t happened I might not have had a clue. Now I am impressed by how slippery, and easy to miss, this perception of cultural time is. It is more than the water we swim in, it is the blindness we extol.

I cannot believe that a form of violence this profound could be so invisible, so imperceptible to us. Worse yet, some of us, take pride in being so busy as to be totally oblivious of time.  Some of us even take pride in our harried lateness. There is a form of mass murder that is disguised by rushing. It isn’t necessarily of others, but of the spirit. “Speed kills” in so many ways, some gross and obvious, and others, so subtle and thorough. Being mangled is just part of doing business in this culture.

All of that, the disfigurement of our kind, the disregard of our souls, the neglect of our own higher sensibilities, is the price we pay, while all along we pretend to be evolving.  It would be a painful dance were we not so distracted. Getting more done in less time is a powerful brew. Smiling absently, we have too great a tendency to celebrate our own unconsciousness. The race to the finish line is exactly that.

Lamentably, this painful tract can go on and on. There is no limit to the effectiveness of speed. Happily, there is an antidote. It is called a breakdown.

In this twisted-up world what looks like breakdown is sometimes breakout. In those rare, painful and debilitating moments, through the alchemy of real life, little clearings reveal a less violent way of being. This is a world that moves in a more paradoxical way. The urgency of machine time gives way to the primacy of the eternal moment.

Strangely, old age, the bane of the crowd, provides as much of this lax freedom as most people can handle. For many it is confusing. There are no time stamps, deadlines, or appropriate seasons, no way to objectively measure progress, value, or productivity. Instead there is only the spacious unfolding of desire. The advance that occurs outside of time, without effort or intention. Aging takes one beyond the rush, to the heart of the matter. The clock ticks differently when urgency disappears.

One could even say hurrying debilitates, while slowing down illuminates. In this way, the old, who are pushed out of the way, and treated like they cannot arrive at what’s important, see better what matters, and are essential aspects of the meaningful journey. The old tend to dodder, thereby insuring the magnificence around us gets noticed.

Downshifting happens naturally to all of our benefit. It looks like old age, but it is really the return of good sense.