Busyness and the speed of our lives
“People are born and married, and live and die, in the midst of an uproar so frantic that you think they would go mad of it.“ William Dean Howells
What is most amazing to me about this quote is that it was written in 1907, before telephones, when cars were new and rare, and telephones and computers were not even in the imagination.
I returned last nite from a from a four day meditation retreat at the nearby monastery where I go every week. You might take just a few breaths to contemplate: Retreat. Refuge. Sanctuary. Rest.
Wayne Muller wrote a book called Sabbath, which I highly recommend, and the need for rhythms of work and rest in our lives. While I have such strong memories of going slowly for two years in Nepal and wanting to not get caught up in the rush and busyness of life when I returned to the U.S., I was not as successful as I’d hoped.
Speed
At the monastery I decided to cut back to one cup of coffee a day. Because of my chronic fatigue since 2007, I had convinced myself that I need multiple cups of coffee a day to keep going. At the same time, I know that coffee can make me speedy and edgy.
To my great surprise I noticed my energy during the day being steadier (no crashes) and less speediness. Then I remembered that I had come to the same conclusions many years ago when I gave up coffee for a period of time. I’m not sure what happened to get me back on coffee—might have been working so hard when the kids were young to pay the bills.
As I was catching up on emails when I returned and beginning this blog entry, I could feel the speediness creeping back in—catching myself typing as fast I as I could. Ah, the persistence of habits.
Habits
This is an appropriate time to talk about one of my more successful teaching inventions, which I invite each of you to try: a 21 Day Exploration. I came up with the idea after reading that it takes about 21 days to develop a new habit or to begin to let go of an old habit. While there is a lot of conflicting research on this topic, I’ll just say here that many people have found this exploration to be beneficial, even life changing.
The idea is to bring mindfulness to something you will do for 21 consecutive days. It could be:
Something you already do every day, for example, using technology, the morning cup of coffee/tea ritual, taking a shower.
Developing a new habit, e.g., keeping a gratitude journal, meditating, yoga, walking outside each day, eating healthy foods, exercising.
Letting go of an old habit: e.g. whining, hurrying; abstaining from sugar or alcohol.
Doing something creative, e.g., writing a poem or song, drawing, etc.
Other: minimizing one’s footprint, meeting someone new each day.
I have used Jon Kabat Zinn’s framework for mindfulness for this exploration: noticing your body, your thoughts, and your emotions. For example, it can mean checking in periodically as you are drawing or eating. It might mean checking in before and after taking that walk or that run. If you are interested in more details about this, you can click on either of the files below, to get more details on doing this.
Mindfulness of pleasant and unpleasant events. Mindfulness with technology.
I will give two stories of spectacular changes. One student decided to walk outside for 30 minutes each day. In her paper, she talked about how her dislike of winter changed. One dramatic entry in her daily journal was noticing a think sheet of ice on a sewer grate one morning and how delicate and how beautiful it was. I noticed less heaviness in her countenance during this time. She wrote about this and when I ran into her a year a half later on campus, she said that she was still taking the walk almost every day!
Another student came up with the idea of meeting someone new each day because she tired of being shy and introverted. Not surprisingly, it was sometimes overwhelming, but the mindfulness helped her to persist. At the end of the semester, she said that the exploration had helped her to “get out of the box” of her social anxiety. During the semester, she realized how little she was looking forward to going back to the same summer job in her small town as a cashier in a store. She smiled and said that she had found a summer job nannying in Luxembourg!
Hurrying
My focus for the next 21 days will be noticing hurrying, which is paradigmatically different from trying to slow down. The latter one has embedded in it the notion of achieving a goal and striving for that goal. The former is lighter, partly because it has joy built in—each time I notice hurrying, like the habit of typing as fast as I can, I smile, and I feel the difference in my body immediately of not typing so fast. It may seem semantic, but the difference is significant.
I will report on what I am noticing at the end of the next three blogs. I invite you to try this out and share what you discover. If you have questions before or during such an adventure, feel free to email me at tombassarear@gmail.com