COUNTERINTUITIVE

When we get anxious, we often find our body wanting to speed up and get more done. Anxiety functions as energy to try to accomplish something that will reduces the anxiety.  

This is especially true when we have lost something or someone significant. The absence of a center-piece of our lives makes us feel anxious. So, it seems normal to get busy and try to replace what is gone with something else that will function as a stabilizing presence for us. 

But, there is a problem with this strategy. Anxious energy is adrenalin that helps us get through a crisis, but it does not function for long term solutions for our emptiness. We frequently run out of energy before we have been able to discover another orienting center for our lives. When that happens, we become exhausted, maybe even depressed. 

So, I suggest something that is counterintuitive.  I suggest that when you are in the process of grieving loss (that is, learning to live without someone or something important) don’t hurry-up but slow-down.  When you are finding your way forward one step at a time, you have to think about your decisions more than you do when life is even and stable. The emotional stress of walking carefully, evaluating each move, determining if the direction forward is what you really want to do—these all take energy.   

Because you are using more energy to live each day, it is critical to take time to rest.  When you pace yourself, when you stop and give your body and mind a respite, they will serve you better for longer.  And working your way through a loss to new life takes longer than many other types of work. 

So, be gentle with your self and  give yourself energy renewal time. It will make a big difference.

SLOW DOWN

Sometimes it seems that with every change life gets faster and faster.  When something new comes along, we have to work to catch up with it.  I got a new journal and now there is more for me to read.  I heard of a new website from my grandson which opens up the whole world in new ways.  More to do.  To do it I have to do everything faster.

But, as the coming new year invites me to evaluate my life, I wonder if there might be more wisdom in slowing down than in speeding up.  Milan Kundera in his book Immorality writes about the difference between highways and roads. Highways are for getting from one point to another.  Roads are for walking and exploring what is along the way.  He says that our lives have become highways. When that happened "[t]ime became a mere obstacle to life, an obstacle that had to be overcome by ever greater speed."

As I begin this new year, I want to live time, not race through it.  I want to be where I am and not where I think I am going.  I think when I slow down and wander the back-roads of the soul, I will discover that life is what I experience now, not something that I am waiting to happen.

OUT OF THE BOX

I loved it.  25 degrees--snow-covered trails, steel gray Indiana sky.  Usually few people travel the trails of Fort Harrison State Park on such a day.  But, as I parked, I saw a couple of yellow school busses.  Traveling down the trail I heard talking--young teens--not yelling and laughing--but talking and listening.  I approached and saw they huddled, looking, listening to a teacher.  As I walked by I heard her say, "If you close you mouth and open your ears, you can hear the water in the stream."  

Further down the path I saw another gaggle of middle-schoolers, their teacher telling them about the deer tracks, the clumps of leaves lying on top of the snow where animals were looking for food.  The apologized for filling the trail.

But, I loved it!

For here were school rooms learning "out of the box".  They were not reading.  They were freezing and smelling and feeling that which they were learning.  Some even seemed intrigued by what they were hearing and seeing.

I loved it not only because they students were leanring where life was lived, but they were in the wildest part of nature that you can find inside a modern city.  They are dealing with what Richard Louv called "nature deficit disorder".  In his book "Last Child in the Woods" he warns that children's fear of nature and their lack of exposure to the rural and wilderness parts of their landscape is leading to all kinds of personal and emotional disorders.  Whether this is true or not, I know nature to be a wonderful teacher of patience and flexibility.  I know it to be a place where, when we slow down and listen and experience, we discover ourselves part of an amazing system of life, energy, tension, death, birth, love and delight.

I loved it--kids out of the bos--learnig and laughing, tasting and seeing.  

Candy Bar Corner

It was a street corner filled with flying candy bars. Bitter cold January morning in Indianapolis, sun struggling to make a difference, and I was on my way to the office. I stopped at 75th and Shadeland and there in the middle of the intersection were flying Snickers and sliding Three Musketeers. Three boxes of candy bars were being mauled as cars raced by, tires flipping cold and chaotic candy bars all over the intersection.

I wondered, "Where are all the kids?" I was tempted to stop in the middle of the intersection, get out of my black Subaru GT and like a kid chasing dollar bills dropped from the back of a Brinks truck, collect as many of the unmashed bars as I could gather in my arms.

But, I didn't stop. I watched, and as the light turned, I drove over the hapless bars and headed on to work. I wondered, "What happened to the little boy who grew up at his parents Dairy Queen in Monett, MO? Where is the little guy who excitedly spotted a penny in the gravel of the parking lot, picked it up, polished it off and carried it carefully in to share the good news with my mother? Where is the little boy who delights in the little sweet gifts that fall from the sky (or from the pocket of some unsuspecting customer, or from the back of some truck carrying candy bars)?"

I wondered, "Have I become so gorged on the sweet gifts of life that I fail to delight in the little ones that fall in my path? Have I become so accustomed to having what I need and getting what I want that I fail to notice the candy bars that just appear out of no where? Am I so busy and moving so fast that I fail to stop and pick up the unexpected delights that fall my way? Am I part of a society that is so obsessed with getting somewhere we are not that we fail to delight in where we are?"

I don't know what candy bar corner was all about. I don't know where the candy came from. I don't see many people buying whole boxes of candy bars in the grocery store. I seldom see boxes of candy bars being carried down the street in open trucks. (The fact is, I seldom see food of any kind in open bed trucks where it could fall off-except tomatoes in the summer heading for the Red Gold factory in northern Indiana). As far as I could tell these wayward collections of wrapped calories just fell from the sky to stir storm-like in the middle of that unsuspecting intersection.

But, what I do know is that I might stop in the racing around of my life and notice the moments that come to me in the lives of other people who come my way. I have missed much because I failed to slow down and pick up the pennies that others have discarded. I have sought to fill my soul with "meaningful and purposeful" activity and in the process, missed the delight of "sweets from heaven" that simply come for a moment and lend light to my soul.

I suspect those candy bars don't really have any purpose or meaning. But, I am grateful they slowed me down to notice my own life.