I was putting the final touches on this Eight Point Program when I accepted a fellowship from the Fulbright exchange program to come to the United States. That turned out to be the beginning of a new career – not education for degrees, but education for living. Without realizing the implications, I was bringing my program to the pacesetters of the modern world.
CHAPTER 2
Slowing Down
Eight ways to make the best of the time we have every day.
But nothing prepared me for New York. As soon as I disembarked I was surrounded by a ceaseless stream of traffic, a bewildering display of speed and noise. My first impression was of millions of cars flashing by. I thought there must be some race going on, with people racing for their lives. Was this the Daytona Beach I had read about? I could not understand why all these cars were rushing about like that.
Naturally, I assumed that once the sun set, the scene would quiet down. All those people would finally get wherever they were in such a hurry to get to and stagger out of their vehicles for a little rest.
There I had my second shock: the traffic continued even after the sun had disappeared. The peace and quiet of evening never came. Eight o’clock, nine o’clock, then ten . . . the traffic just went on and on. What seemed completely unnatural to me had become, to the people of New York, a way of life.
That very first day I made a conscious resolution never to get caught in that kind of race.
“The pace of life here is fast,” friends reassured me. “But don’t worry; you’ll adjust.”
I replied, “I don’t want to adjust. And not only that, I want to help everyone around me to get out of the rat race too.”
I have lived in this country for over thirty years now, and I have kept my resolve. Not once have I let myself be hurried by the pace of life here, no matter how severe the pressures around me. And I am proud to say that in the years since then, I have helped thousands of people to slow down too. From that experience has come this book.
Just one person slowing down helps everyone around to relax too.
During my first Christmas in California, I went to the post office to send a package to my mother in India. As I neared the sedate old building, erected in a time when the pace of life was slower, I noticed cars double-parked and people darting up and down the broad granite steps. Inside was a scene of frustration, exasperation, and sometimes outright anger.
Crowd or no crowd, I needed to mail my package. I joined a long queue and stood patiently watching the scene around me. Everyone was giving unintended lessons in how to put yourself under pressure. One fellow in front of me was bouncing up and down as if he were on a pogo stick. He was in such a hurry that he just had to release his nervous energy somehow, and with people pressing you in front and behind, the only direction possible is up.
The gentleman in back of me was also in a hurry, and he was expending his nervous energy by blowing hot air down my neck.
“Well,” I thought, “Christmas is the time for expressions of good will.” So I turned around. “Please take my place,” I told him. “I’m not in a hurry.”
He was so distracted that he didn’t hear me. He just said brusquely, “What?”
“Take my place,” I repeated. “I have time. I’m in no hurry at all.”
He stared, and then he began to relax. I felt the atmosphere around us begin to change. He apologized for being in such a hurry and mumbled something about being double-parked. I wanted to ask, “Why do you double-park?” But I thought better of it.
Slowly the queue moved forward. The young woman at the counter was probably a college student filling in for the holidays, and she was making mistake after mistake – giving the wrong stamps, giving the wrong change – while people complained and corrected her. I could see that she was getting more and more upset; and the more upset she got, the more mistakes she made and the longer each transaction took. All because everybody was in a hurry! If the scene had ever had any Christmas cheer, it was evaporating rapidly.
I’m fond of students; I was a professor for many years. So when it came my turn at the window, I said, “I’m from India. Take your time.”
She looked as if she couldn’t believe it. But she smiled and relaxed, and she gave me the right change and the right stamps too. I thanked her and wished her a merry Christmas.
As I walked out, I noticed that the man behind me returned her smile. The whole room had relaxed a little; I even heard a ripple of laughter from the end of the queue. Pressure is contagious, but so is good will. Just one person slowing down, one person not putting others under pressure, helps everyone else to relax too.
To paraphrase the Buddha, we learn to do this by doing it. We learn to slow down by trying to slow down. This chapter will give you some ways to start – ways I learned in the hectic days of my university teaching career. The suggestions that follow are not catch-all solutions. They are skills and grow through practice. The more you apply them, the more opportunities you will find to apply them further.
1. Give Yourself More Time
The easiest way to find more time is so simple that we often overlook it: get up earlier.
This does much more than simply gain another hour or so of clock time. The pace you set first thing in the morning is likely to stay with you through the day. If you get up early and set a calm, unhurried pace, it is much easier to resist getting speeded up later on as the pressures of the day close in on you.
This simple step has profound effects. In the natural rhythms of life, there is a period in the junctions between night and day, in the ebb and flow between activity and rest, when the mind grows calm. If you set aside a period of quiet time early in the morning, it puts your activities into a more peaceful perspective that will stay with you all day.
Then, if at all possible, have a leisurely breakfast with family or friends before going off to work. If you live alone, it is still helpful to sit down with a nourishing breakfast – don’t eat it standing up! – and enjoy it without hurry. All these things set the pace you will be following for the rest of the day – and, to the extent they become habits, for the rest of your life.
Similarly, get to work a little early – in time to speak to those you work with, in time for a few minutes of reflection while you arrange the priorities that face you at work. These are simple steps, but they can go a long way in slowing down the pace of life, not only for you but for those around you as well.
At the University of Minnesota, where the Fulbright program first posted me, I used to go to the cafeteria at seven-thirty in the morning, when it opened, and sit down to enjoy a leisurely breakfast. At about ten to eight the doors would burst open and the students would come pouring in by the hundreds, sweeping through the cafeteria line. They would alight briefly at the table, inhale their food, and in ten minutes they would all be gone – off to their eight o’clock classes. It never failed to astound me.
Finally, one morning I stopped a student I knew and asked him, “Tell me, why do you come for breakfast at ten to eight?”
He was really embarrassed at my simplicity. “Because,” he explained, “I get up at a quarter to eight.”
When we start the day with just minutes for breakfast, we are going to be rushing all day long.
2. Don’t Crowd Your Day
The desire to fit too much into a fixed span of time is pervasive, and technology merely adds to the pressure. We are expected to keep up with more and more information at work and at home, and the media obligingly drown us in it. I know people who feel duty-bound to read it, too. After all, some of it must be important. We really ought to know what’s in it . . .
Often we cope with this by trying to skim through everything that comes our way. It is a race – like so much else in our lives. But is it a race we want to participate in? When we feel robbed of time already, do we want to spend what little we have on activities that only add to the noise
and clutter in the mind?
To relieve this pressure, we simply have to stop trying to do everything possible. It is important to realize that we can’t read everything, can’t keep ourselves entertained every available moment, can’t absorb or even catch all the so-called information that is offered to us every day. We have to make choices – which requires an unhurried mind.
Make wise choices about what you read. Read only what is necessary or worthwhile. And then take the time to read carefully.
I have always loved to read. I grew up appreciating Carlyle’s statement that “a good book is the purest essence of a human soul.” Even as a student I would seek out something truly worth reading and read it slowly, with complete attention, so as to absorb all the author had poured into it. Even today I don’t like background music or a cup of coffee at my side. And when I reach the end of a chapter or a section, I close the book and reflect on what I have read. I would much rather read one good book with concentration and understanding than to skim through a list of best-sellers that will have no effect on my life or my understanding of life. One book read with concentration and reflected upon is worth a hundred flashed through without any absorption at all.
Trying to read everything that comes our way is just another aspect of trying to do it all. With television, the equivalent is channel surfing. Once we have learned there is nothing worth watching, why not turn it off? Flitting through fifty or more channels just divides attention even more. And when we can’t get our mind to slow down enough to stay on the same focus, how can we expect to enjoy anything? How can we do a good job at anything we do?
Because our lives are so fast, we take a short attention span for granted. A truly creative mind has a very long attention span. When a great painter, musician, or scientist turns to a subject, he or she stays with it not for minutes but for hours, days, and even years, going deeper and deeper.
It’s not only with ourselves that we try to squeeze more and more into our lives. We do so with the lives of those we love as well. Many parents I know spend hours each day ferrying children to after-school activities. I am all for giving children opportunities, but even here we need to be selective – perhaps especially here, because children have little control of their own time. Their time is in our hands.
Parents today feel children are deprived if they do not have a variety of activities. But this simply isn’t so. Children are deprived if they don’t have their parents’ love and attention, they are deprived if they don’t have food and fresh air and a good education and time for play, but they really lose very little if they are not kept moving from Scout meeting to soccer practice to piano lessons to karate. Even more than adults, children need to be protected from the pressure to hurry. When we fill their days like this, we are only teaching them to hurry, hurry, hurry as we do.
3. Ask What’s Important
Long ago, when I began to see the benefits of meditation, I wanted to be sure I made time for it every day. But I couldn’t see how I could fit it in. I had an extremely busy schedule, with responsibilities from early morning until late at night.
I valued all this, but I was determined to make meditation a top priority. So I sat down and made a list of all the things I felt bound to do.
Then I took my red pencil and crossed out everything that was not actually necessary or beneficial. Some of the results surprised me. I found I had been involved in activities that I couldn’t honestly say benefited anyone, including myself. I had simply become used to doing them. When I surveyed what remained, I found I had freed a number of hours every week.
This red-pencil exercise may seem painful, but very quickly you will find it liberating. You will find you have more time to do the things that are important to you, more time for family and friends, more time for everything that makes life worthwhile.
Of course, this list reflects your priorities, no one else’s. No one will be looking over your shoulder while you decide what gets the red pencil. And, of course, the list is not permanent. Every now and then I still repeat this exercise, making a list and questioning all my activities because priorities change.
One of the most important things about this kind of review is that it is an admission to yourself that you can’t do everything. Once you make this realization, you can begin to ask, “What do I want to do? What is important?” When all is said and done, if you don’t make this list for yourself, the pressures of everyday life will simply make it for you.
When you have pared down your list, test your decision for a few weeks. Often you will find that you and the world can do without activities you had thought essential, and that you have all kinds of new time to allocate as you choose.
When I first did this, I found to my surprise that quite a few of the things I had been engaged in were actually expendable. I had never suspected this. When I dropped out of these activities, I was under the impression that people would miss me. I even asked myself what I would do when people asked why I hadn’t been turning up. I was rather embarrassed to discover that nobody noticed my absence. Nobody even asked, “Where have you been?” It was a very healthy reminder.
4. Take Time for Relationships
Personal relationships are often the first casualties in a speeded-up way of life.
“Take time for relationships” may sound like odd advice. I have just suggested freeing time, and now I’m saying to give more time to others. And it’s true that relationships require time – sometimes a good deal of time. But it is time well spent.
Take the simple question of meals. As the pace of life has accelerated, a great many of us have got out of the habit of sitting together and sharing a leisurely meal with family or friends. Often we eat alone, in a hurry, on our feet, even on the run or behind the wheel. I know people who seldom really eat a meal at all; they forage, or string together a series of snacks. This is not only the result of hurry, it adds to it. We can slow down by taking the time – making the time – to find a friend or two and create a little oasis in our day where we can shut out the pressures around us and enjoy human company.
Eating together is considered a sacrament in many cultures. These simple bonds play a part in holding a society together. So even if you live alone, arrange to share a meal regularly with friends or family. I know people who live alone through choice, but who carefully maintain and nurture personal relationships by getting together with friends to prepare and enjoy meals. It is not only nutrition you are getting when you do this, but also the loving companionship shared by everyone at the table.
Personal relationships, of course, not only take time, they take “quality time.” This is especially true with children, where what matters is not only the number of hours we spend but also the attention we give, the love we show, the extent to which we enter into the child’s world instead of dragging him or her into our own. Schedules are fine at the office, but children have a sense of time that is very different – and much more natural. They don’t know about appointments and parking meters and living in the fast lane, and we cannot make them understand. All we can do is hurry them along.
We adults can learn to slow down enough to enter their world; it’s not their job to speed up and join ours. Where is the hurry? What period of life is more precious than childhood? If we understood its worth, we would devote ourselves to slowing down the pace of childhood instead of rushing our children out of it. The time we spend on our children while they are young will be more than repaid when they reach their teenage years.
5. Take Time for Reflection
Taking time to pause and reflect now and then is not only part of slowing down; it is one of the rewards, too. And because it adds to efficiency and effectiveness in any walk of life, it is a very good use of time.
Of course, there are situations when immediate action is required, when there is no time to pause and think. But such situations are rare, and the best way to prepare for them is to learn to s
tay calm and pause to think when circumstances are pressuring us to hurry.
This skill is applicable everywhere. I can give one example from my university, where final examinations observed the time limit to the minute. This naturally put students under a good deal of pressure, and most of them would start writing the moment the examination paper was put in their hands. But there were always a few who would pause to study the choice of essays, choose the ones they could answer best, and plan their time; only then would they begin to write. And generally they would do well – often better than a brighter student who plunged in to answer without thinking.
Whether it is an exam, a report at work, or even just a reply to a letter, it always helps to stop and reflect over what we need to say. We need to remind ourselves to take the time for reflection, for observation, for original thinking.
6. Don’t Let Yourself Get Hurried
Often, after hearing me talk about slowing down, someone will come up and say, “What you say sounds good, but you don’t know my job situation. I have to hurry.”
Job requirements do vary, yet I have been told by an emergency medical technician doing ambulance work that it is possible to resist being hurried even in the midst of frantic circumstances. In fact, he said, that is just when he needs to keep his mind cool, concentrated, and clear. In such situations, the hands and brain of a paramedic or nurse or firefighter have been highly trained. They know what to do, and they carry out their duties swiftly. A speeded-up mind only gets in the way. (In later chapters I will give you some effective techniques for staying slow and concentrated when people are trying to speed you up.)
Second, with some reflection, it is possible to avoid a great many situations where we know we are going to be pressured to speed up. If we look at our home life and our work, we may see that a surprising number of these situations can be forestalled. If we cannot avoid these circumstances, it helps to be forewarned. Eventually, we may find ways of escaping a predicament in which we thought we had no choice.
Take Your Time Page 3