I love how Chapter 1 in In Praise of Slowness begins.
“What’s the very first thing you do when you wake up in the morning?”
The answer: We look at the clock.
For me, it just so happens that my clock is also my alarm is also my phone is also my email checker is also my Twitter checker is also my blog checker and my Google Reader and…
Before I even get out of bed, I’m caught up on what’s happened in my little world in the last six to eight hours.
That’s right.
MY little world.
One could argue I am simply checking in on connections and relationships.
But honestly, I’m just trying to find my first fix of affirmation for the day.
(FIRST fix. AHEM. More on that in a moment.)
In some philosophies, we learn from Honoré that time is considered cyclical. It’s renewing. Coming…going…it’s about seasons. Before there were things like clocks or time was measured as intricately as it is today, people ate when they were hungry and slept when they were tired.
In most of our developed countries, time is considered linear. There is a Point A (now) and a Point B (end) and we want to accomplish as much as possible between the two. We take chunks of activities (eating, sleeping, TV, work, community, sex, reading, shopping, consuming, etc.) and try and fit as many chunks as we can into these pre-determined amount of time.
So we feel rushed. We feel there’s never enough time to do everything.
(Hey, that’s because there *isn’t* enough time to do everything).
With improvements in technology over past centuries, we’ve been able to save time. It is going to take me two months to cycle across the country this summer. In a plane, I could knock that out in six hours.
If we let technology run the show, we don’t save time — we just end up with a different set of things to do. The amount of work hardly changes, if it changes at all.
This chapter, titled Do Everything Faster, ends with a very poignant quote from Mark Kingwell, a professor of philosophy at the University of Toronto.
“Despite what people think, the discussion about speed is never really about the current state of technology. It goes much deeper than that, it goes back to the human desire for transcendence.”
And that takes me back to my early morning affirmation/phone/clock check.
I know one day I’m going to die.
I’d like to hope that what I’m doing is making a difference.
Even though I’m not on this earth to make people happy, my morning “routine” is an (inaccurate) way I measure my value.
Sometimes things need to be done fast. When I was on a bike ride with a friend last week, a severe thunderstorm was approaching us. We needed to stop smelling the honeysuckle on the Natchez Trace and find shelter. When we need to travel quickly to reach family members in a crisis, we can. Some cancers can’t be treated slowly. You get my point.
However, instead of viewing time as a line with a start and a finish, I’m going to try and see my life and purpose in seasons. Some fast. Some slow. Some stressed. Some refreshing. Some aggressive. Some passive. Some giving. Some receiving.
By intentionally doing this, there is no Point A in my linear time line of life and purpose that begins each morning.
Instead, every morning is a step into a season.
…A season lived in truth to whatever I happen to be doing at the time.
…A season to be embraced and experienced fully.
Not rushed. Not hurried. And not afraid of the end.
(Because there is no end…just a season for leaving this physical life behind…)