SLOWING - a perspective and a prime directive

Welcome back Viphilus*

I want us to begin our journey slowly. Intentionally slowly. I want us to take time to do what few seem to be able to even dream about anymore: think. To be able to think ... deeply think ... requires that we slow things down and settle ourselves, on the inside.

I have been teaching on the notion of SLOWING for more than a decade, yet I still struggle to know how to start the conversation. It's like trying to describe a globular world when your hearers are flat-earth believers. There's no easy way to jump into this so I'll just toss 3 grenades at you... 3 deeply profound thoughts from 3 heavyweight thinkers:


“Hurry is not of the devil; hurry is the devil.”

“Busyness is the archenemy of spiritual authenticity.”

“Muddy water becomes clear only if you let it be still for a while”

The pedigree of the men providing these words should give us pause to pay attention to their opinions. The first is from Carl Jung, arguably the father of modern analytic psychology. The second is from Bill Hybels, arguably one of the most intensely driven leadership thinkers in the evangelical Christian world in the past twenty years. The third is from Dallas Willard, arguably one of the premiere hybrid academicians of the last thirty years, a genius in both philosophical and theological thought. 

Yet, despite their erudition, these sound-bites sound like little more than bumper-stickers. But cynics beware ... not all Yoda-like utterances should be summarily dismissed just because you believe metaphorical wisdom can't be pithy. There is much instruction in these quotes. NOW we just need a rule. When it comes to actual change in ourselves, I have found that one thing is needed above all else: a clear directive. It's important for directives to be supported with a foundation of logic and reason, which is what today's post is about ... a perspective on the need for slowing down. But before we're done, I'll offer a clear directive. Actually, as an unashamed fan of Star Trek (because I watched TOS live when I was just a lad), I will call it a prime directive: a prime directive for slowing.    

Let's back up. My formative TV years were the 60s ... which didn't just have amazing shows like Star Trek (I'll miss you Leonard). It also had goofy shows like the rural sitcom, Green Acres. Here is the show's synopsis: an upper-middle class couple moves from a Park Avenue condo to the slower setting of a country farm. The humour came from the ever-present conflict between the husband, who craved the need to slow down, and the wife, a high-society woman who craved the city life. Silliness and inane dialogue aside, I think it was really TV's first stab at addressing America's growing realization that life was moving too fast and there was a deep need to slow down. It actually ran for 6 years.

I was a kid who enjoyed that show. What did I care about the sober message behind it? Why would I want to pay close attention to the subtext ... I was a kid? But I wished that I had because maybe I might have started paying attention sooner to the "muddiness" that would eventually grow inside me as I grew up, got a job, started a family, and became a contributing member of society. 

Not paying attention can cost you. BIG!  It would eventually cost me a personal setback (sounds as good as any other euphemism for emotional breakdown) which left me pondering deeply about how life got out of control. My remediation led me to countless books ... one of the more important ones in my early re-tuning being John Ortberg's, “The Life You’ve Always Wanted (Spiritual Disciplines for Ordinary People)." Dr. Ortberg really got my attention with the following confession: 

           I called a wise friend to ask for some spiritual direction. I described the pace at which things tend to move 
           in my current setting. I told him about the rhythms of our family life and about the present condition of 
           my heart, as best I could discern it. What did I need to do, I asked him, to be spiritually healthy?  

            Long pause. 

            “You must ruthlessly eliminate hurry from your life,” he said at last.                          

            Another long pause. 

           “Okay, I’ve written that one down,” I told him, a little impatiently. 
           “That’s a good one. Now what else is there?”

           I had many things to do, and this was a long-distance conversation, so I was anxious to cram as many units of spiritual 
           wisdom into the least amount of time possible. 

           Another long pause. 

           “There is nothing else,” he said.

John's confession was worth the price of that book to me. What struck me most wasn't his mentor's wisdom, albeit supremely wise. No, what really caught my attention was John's responses and thought process that were driven by the impatience within him. I was him. I might have even been worse. At that time there were moments (sometimes whole days) when my inner engine was stuck on high-idle, revving at ridiculously high cycles for no earthly reason other than my own warped expectation of how events should be unfolding and my drive to make life work at my speed. 

This may well have been my first honest look inside of me ... my first real trek into self-awareness. It wasn't intentional or strategic ... it was driven by my crash 'n burn and the overwhelming fact that my approach to living wasn't working very well. Dr. Ortberg's book was like a 2x4 across the head, saying, "PAY ATTENTION."

After a 3-year journey out of "the shadow of death" I emerged a different person. I would hear comments from others around me that, "you've changed ... you don't take life so seriously anymore." Truth was, I actually took life a lot more seriously after my climb out of the pit. It was ME that I didn't take so seriously. The new me was really really new. And I remember how that climb out of the pit began ... it began when something inside of me realized that the only path forward was by moving my heart from city speed to country speed. It began with me intentionally slowing down.

Since then I have paid attention to not only myself but also everyone around me. What I've been witnessing is disturbing to me, and I'm not seeing any improvement. Most people suffer from "hurry sickness," Dr. Ortberg's term for this inner condition. It is everywhere! OK, maybe not everywhere ... but certainly everywhere that I look in the world in which I live. But apparently, there are groups of people who do "get it," as we read in Lettie Cowman's Springs in the Valley; 

“In the deep jungles of Africa, a traveler was making a long trek. Coolies had been engaged from a tribe to carry the loads. The first day they marched rapidly and went far. The traveler had high hopes of a speedy journey. But the second morning these jungle tribesmen refused to move. For some strange reason they just sat and rested. On inquiry as to the reason for this strange behaviour, the traveler was informed that they had gone too fast the first day, and that they were now waiting for their souls to catch up with their bodies.” 

Jungle tribesmen know what they need to do to restore life’s balance. Do we?

We live our lives at a frenetic pace and have convinced ourselves that the only way to bring about harmony, order, clarity and balance is to work faster, think quicker, and hurry harder! But how is that working for us? The answer is self-evident; all our hurrying is not producing what we’re after … a sense of “timefulness” … the feeling of having enough time. What we actually experience is often the opposite. 

The solution?  Slow down!

Admittedly slowing down is hard to do because we are a time-obsessed generation due to our belief that time-management and hurrying will mitigate our ever-increasing TO-DO list. We live on fast food from drive-thru windows so we can eat in our cars to be good multi-taskers. We read about programs to help us lose weight, grow hair, improve our sex life, and build sustainable life skills all in 10-20 days because any longer is just too slow … and those are just the tabloid headlines we scanned as we scurried through the grocery store “express lanes” where customers with 10 items or fewer are treated with distinction. Self-help schools numbering in the hundreds (or thousands) teach (and tease) us that it’s possible to microwave maturity. But none of this is working for us. Be encouraged though … the Holy Grail of time management and productivity has been discovered (rediscovered actually ... it's really quite ancient) and it is changing lives. It is the art (and science) of slowing down.

Working smarter and thinking more wisely lead to greater accomplishment, but only after first slowing down. Working smarter and thinking more wisely make sense … but why slow down? How can slowing down help you to accomplish more? The first thing you must realize is that being hurried has nothing to do with being busy. In other words, you need to step back and check your assumptions about the value of hurrying. Most great or highly effective people are often busy, but seldom hurried! The key is to stop thinking about just doing things and start thinking about doing the right things­ …things that are important rather than just urgent. 

In his classic booklet Charles Hummel said that, “we are governed by the tyranny of the urgent.” If we are to break free of this tyranny then this will require a new paradigm … a fresh perspective (this is next week's topic). Ortberg speculates that if you imagine yourself accomplishing fewer, but better things, perhaps you can also imagine doing them at a slower pace too. Hence, doing the right things is step 1; step 2 is doing things right.

I wonder how many of us can claim John Wesley's words as our own; 
“Though I am always in haste, I am never in a hurry because I never undertake more work than I can go through with calmness of spirit.” 

In, “The Power of Full Engagement,” Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz note, 
“It is no coincidence that every enduring spiritual tradition has emphasized practices such as prayer, retreat, contemplation and meditation – all means by which to quietly connect with and regularly revisit what matters most.” 

Jim Loehr is one of the founding members of the Human Performance Institute. A few years ago I pulled this off their website: 
“When clients come through our program, one of our aims is to help them slow down, to put aside their preoccupations and their pressing demands for long enough to step back and take a look at the choices they are making.”

Busyness has become an addiction to many, and like any addiction, after a while you crave more of it while enjoying it less. Ultimately, it enslaves you and robs from every area of your life; you can’t function without it yet you also don’t enjoy it. Dr.Ortberg, who is both a church pastor and psychologist, diagnoses this malady with the term, “hurry sickness”: “we don’t hurry because we have a disordered schedule; we hurry because we have a disordered heart.” The “sickness” shows itself in some interesting ways. We do things to avoid short-term pain (while knowing the loss of future gain) and seek short-term pleasure (while knowing the future loss) … all because urgency dictates that we “need” the best results now. 

The drive to satisfy basic needs seems to have a built-in urgency. I once took a course on How the Brain Works and the neuro-scientist who delivered the classes began with, "All human beings are born as hedonists ... pleasure-seeking, pain-avoiding creatures." 

"Wow ... what a dim view of humanity," was my instant recoil. But 30-seconds later I knew she was right. My Christian training also confirmed her hypothesis. Short-term thinking that stems from the urgency-paradigm has been written about for millennia ... almost since writing itself began. It's the thinking that leads us to spend tomorrow’s resources on today’s wants, resulting in us living out Æsop’s fable of the goose that laid the golden egg. This is not effective.

So, did you catch it? Did you see the prime directive? It was offered by John Ortberg's spiritual advisor: 

PRIME DIRECTIVE

Ruthlessly eliminate hurry from your life!

For me, this is arguably life's most important practice.

Next week we'll look at one of the most insightful self-awareness tools I've run across as we discuss the principle of urgent vs. important. For now, let me conclude with a poem.

23^rd Psalm – Revisited

(by Christine and Tom Sine)

The clock is my dictator, I shall not rest.

It makes me lie down only when exhausted.

It leads me into deep depression, it hounds my soul.

It leads me in circles of frenzy for activities’ sake.

Even though I run frantically from task to task,

I will never get it all done, for my “ideal” is with me.

Deadlines and my need for approval, they drive me.

They demand performance from me,

beyond the limits of my schedule.

They anoint my head with migraines,

My in-basket overflows.

Surely fatigue and time pressures shall follow me

all the days of my life.

And I dwell in the bonds of frustration forever.

Blessings Viphilus,

Your friend, Omega Man

OCA Training

PS ... If this post has just teased you and you want need more before next week then let me direct you to the Sultan of Slow ... the Dragon-slayer of the demon of hurry: fellow Canadian Carl Honoré. My appreciation for the importance of slowing was still in its infancy when Carl wrote his award-winning book in 2004, "In Praise of Slowness: challenging the cult of speed."  Check out his site if you're really keen on this topic. Better yet, get his book.

* Viphilus means, "lover of life"