The Wisdom of a Well-timed Reboot
“Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished.”
– Lao Tsu
“Mindfulness is a pause – the space between stimulus and response: that’s where choice lies.”
– Tara Brach
“For fast acting relief, try slowing down.”
– Lily Tomlin
The earth’s rotation and revolution remain relatively constant, yet the world seems to keep moving ever faster. It feels like each year passes more quickly than the last, despite their actual lengths all being the same, the 29th of February notwithstanding. Those of us who reach old age often feel startled and clueless as to how we got there so fast. Restful sleep is well served by our slowing down our frenetic pace of living and taking enough time to appreciate and savor what our world brings to us. Taking our time seems to have become a lost art, and our relentless hurrying has brought us an epidemic of insomnia, making us more vulnerable to many problems affecting our physical and mental health.
In addition to the fatigue brought on by insomnia, the speed of the world we have created, profoundly influenced by our ancestors, brings us other big challenges, personally and culturally. Impatience is a big one; it can bring on conflict, stress, rudeness and all kinds of accidents, some tragic, causing life-long suffering. We can easily lose our ability to be kind when our patience runs out. Moreover, consider all the corners we cut when we’re impatient. For one thing, the culture has become collectively mired in unprecedented obesity, much of which relates to fast food consumption, a diet driven by needing things immediately. And if we feel the need to make our food fast, we usually pay for it in abysmal nutrition, which in turn brings the possibility of various serious illnesses and diseases, many of them life threatening. (The ubiquitous fast food meal can also be made necessary by other things beyond the scope of this article, such as this country’s extreme inequality of wealth.)
One reason why life seems to go by so fast is that we are often not paying much attention to it. We may taste the first bite of a wonderfully prepared meal, but then mentally scurry off to some other place while we mindlessly consume the rest of it, indifferent to its gifts, and not even realizing it. Our minds wander so much that a good deal of what we experience escapes our awareness. Some of that tuning out is defensive; it has become incredibly stressful and difficult to pay attention to our present world. The epidemic of adult Attention-deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) is thought to be related to that high stress and is causing much suffering to many people.
The crazier the ride, the more our valuing our sanity dictates that we need to spend time not riding it. We open a wealth of possibilities when we simply stop. And stop everything: we need to be dropping the problem we’re solving, the meal we’re planning, the argument we’re analyzing, the annoyance and pressure of our ten million emails, and all of our stressful, terribly important responsibilities. A complete stop. When we do that, it is as if we have given the loud noise in our heads the chance to finally drop.
When we pause, we stop being involuntarily pulled along by the unhealthy, frenetic pace of the culture. The pause is over quickly, but it is critical to our staying healthy and the more regularly we do it, the more it does for us. We are pacing ourselves when we pause, which can prevent, among other things, burnout and compassion fatigue. When we stop, we become able to look at different ways of seeing a complex situation, enabling us to respond more adaptively. We notice important things that we had been ignoring, such as how the body is doing and what we are experiencing in the realm of feeling. Asking and answering questions such as “What do I need now?” becomes more possible. And the more we know, the better equipped we are to take appropriate action.
When we are hurrying, our thinking is not at its best, so our decisions can suffer. Taking time out enables us to access our deeper wisdom and brings us into the present moment, in which we feel more alive and connected to self and others. Pausing is an effective way of keeping ourselves from living on autopilot. With the resultant clarity, adaptive decisions and actions are much more within reach. Finally, and significantly, stopping allows our brains to take charge of our mouths! Many regrettable statements are made carelessly and in haste.
So, the faster things run out there, the more important it is for us to pull out of that rush for a few moments, regroup and continue with more calm and clarity. It may be helpful to set a “pause timer,” making sure you remember to keep your regular breaks from that dizzying ride we endure together. Ultimately, honoring Lily Tomlin’s wise words, simply slowing down amidst life’s rush offers immense rewards!
