Not everything has to be fast.
No. 115: Life isn't a 2-day delivery.
I swear, it’s all Amazon’s fault. Jeff Bezos and his Prime membership and his 2-day shipping.
For part of the year, I live in the Philippines, where there is no expectation that the item you buy online will arrive at your doorstep within two days, let alone overnight.
Everybody’s just fine receiving their online purchases sometime between 5-10 days. And no one — other than Amazon-trained expats like me — keeps tracking and checking their order status or laments, “Why couldn’t I just get a text update every time the status changes?!”
After a few online purchases, you’ll find yourself slowly forgetting about Bezos’ promise. Whatever it is, it’ll get to you soon enough. Everything is in its own time.
To be sure, there is a sense of urgency in the Philippines, too. And yet, it doesn’t seem to be the same urgency I feel in the US. (I’m in the US right now, and I can feel the stark difference in my bones.)
Could it be that the clock runs slower there? That a minute there is actually an hour elsewhere?
• • •
Celeste Headlee, in her book Do Nothing, says, “The idea is not that everything should be slower, but that not everything needs to be fast.”
Somehow, we have fallen into the trap of wanting and expecting everything to be fast. Fast food. Fast delivery. I was going to circle back to Bezos, but then again, Queen sang this bit a while back:
I want it all and I want it now.
So maybe the sense of urgency preceded Amazon setting our collective expectations.
• • •
The thing is, my ‘I want it now’ mentality doesn’t just apply to deliveries — it shows up in all areas of my life. But I’m slowly retraining myself in the art of patience, and travel has been a great teacher.
And I’m not talking about patience being a mandatory skill if you’re to survive flight delays and long airport security check-ins and all that stuff with your sanity intact. Sure, we need patience for that. But traveling long distances these past few years, particularly between the US and Asia, has given me countless opportunities to practice the art of waiting patiently.
You see, I’ve learned to appreciate long layovers in foreign airports as important liminal spaces... a time to regroup and fully experience the sense of “leaving a place” and preparing to “enter a new space.” I’ve also realized that the Lou Blaser in Asia is not exactly the same person in the US. And those hours-long layovers, those liminal periods, allow me ample time to feel the shift emerge and switch my capes, so to speak.
When I started traveling back and forth between these two continents, I just wanted to get there fast, as soon as humanly possible. To be done with the travel part already and be wherever I’m supposed to be. I don’t feel that way anymore.
• • •
Of course, there are things we would always want to be faster than slower. The Internet. Getting test results. Fast food (It’d be strange if it weren’t!).
But as Headlee says, not everything has to be fast. In fact, there are things we’d rather they be slow. Here are some of mine. Reunion with loved ones. Holiday get-togethers. Walking along the beach. Hugs. Reading a great book. Eating lobsters, or oysters, or steamer clams. Catching the sunrise. Drinking good port. Museum visits. Sitting on a park bench overlooking the Potomac.
What’s on your list?
🏷 A Fulfilling Life
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“It’s not just: How can I think this is not so bad? No, it is how to will yourself to see that this must be good — an opportunity to gain a new foothold, move forward, or go in a better direction.” — Ryan Holiday
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This comment, left by
on last week’s post (Makes You Think) is so good!“I think many women have become queens of efficiency. Right down to figuring out how to bring in ALL the bags of groceries in one trip because it saves times. But really, what does it mean to "save time"...isn't time something that just goes on no matter what? Is it really something we "spend"? I think there are times in my life that I have "endured" and other times in my life that I have "enjoyed" and yet other times in my life that I have "suffered". Seems to me, time is something that we FEEL, not that we spend.”
It definitely made me think! 😊
Here’s to an easeful week ahead.
Cool Beans,
Lou Blaser
When we left the US in 2012, I proudly surrendered my faithful commuter mug. To be fair, it was on its final days anyway, but I did so declaring I would drink coffee from ceramic cups without lids going forward. When I was drinking coffee, I imagined, I would only drink coffee.
Poetic, eh? In truth, nobody does this. We at least stare out into the world, and the mind just rambles. These days, I practice Spanish with my morning joe. It's fine, but I don't commute so... winning?
But there is something to be said for down-throttle the endless efficiency subroutines. In my life, I call this rushing. It's not going fast, far from it. It's the perception of going fast, which manifests in a few ways worth calling out.
• Multi-tasking actions, especially those that use the same part of the brain
• Switching routine tasks around to create fake novelty and the sense of getting ahead of the normal schedule.
• Getting ahead of actions
That last one reveals itself to me when I think I've placed something on a surface squarely, and it falls as I hurry away. I'll notice the mind determining that the object seems to have willed itself to fall, and then agitation arises.
Nope. I'm rushing. Harried is the word. It's a terrible way to live.
I loved this, Lou. Especially the insight about fully living into the liminal spaces between continents. On my list, is the slow sip of my morning coffee. This is how I train myself to be present at the threshold of a new day.