Hurried

My children seem to have no capacity to hurry.

I ask politely. I get frustrated. I explain the reasons to them. I appeal to their empathy. I model the behavior I'm asking for.  I give them encouragement. I threaten them with consequences. I promise rewards. And sometimes...gasp...I even yell at them when they still don't hurry like I've asked them to.

It seems so simple to me. I know they can move their bodies faster because I've seen it.

But then I got to thinking: Is hurrying really such an important thing to teach them?

While they seem to have no interest in hurrying - I seem to be entirely enthralled by it.

Or maybe, enslaved by it, is a more accurate way of describing it.

I can certainly be that guy who gets frustrated whenever everyone else isn't moving as fast as I am. Slow drivers, people who take their time at the grocery check-out, waiting on hold for customer service, an internet connection that takes more than a second to load a page...

What am I in such a hurry for? Why is it so important to me? Why do I think my kids need to take on this of all my habits? Maybe their lack of hurry should be teaching me? Maybe their lack of hurry isn't a deficiency to be remedied, but the actual default mode humans should function in?

Am I hurrying towards anything in particular? Or has hurrying just become a chronic state of frantic activity that serves some other purpose in my life other than accomplishing any particular goal? In other words; is it hurry just for the sake of hurrying?

Rollo May (a thinker who's wisdom was lost on me when I read him in my twenties, but now seems brilliant and profound), said that society's proclivity for frantic activity is indicative of just how much anxiety it's people are trying to cope with.  He suggested it's not that we sit around consciously thinking through our deepest fears of death, meaning, responsibility, and isolation, but rather that we keep them at arms length by creating a lifestyle so busy that it gives us the sense we must be doing something important. Even if the things we're busily pursuing aren't particularly meaningful or important, the pace of our activity gives us the illusion of importance and meaning. So it becomes, hurrying for hurrying's own sake.

Even the truth of this is something I'm eager to hurry past and move on to the next "super important" thing I "should" do tonight. Maybe as you finish reading this you'll be tempted to hurry on to the next thing.

I wonder what would happen today if we all slowed down, at least just a little?