Mindful Metropolis November 2011 : Page 35
25 mph speed limit. They’re velocitized. The word exemplifies our hurry-up American lifestyle. Patience is a forgotten virtue. Our high-speed, autopilot, fast-food, instant-messaging, 4G “work-like-your-hair-is-on-fire” world is ingrained. I mulled over how “rush” is a product of social conditioning—the hypnosis of velociti-zation. As kids we rushed to school. In high school and college, we rushed through ex-ams. In college, I was even tested for a sum-mer job in a department store. I was seques-tered in a booth with a pegboard and a box of pegs and given a “package wrapper manual dexterity” test. After 30 seconds, a woman blew a whistle in my ear and shouted, “Time’s up!” I dropped all the pegs and failed the test. According to a clinical psychologist at Har-vard Medical School, the “exam nightmare” is one of the most common dreams in the U.S. Time stress can also be bad for your health. Of course, spirituality, meditation, tai chi and yoga are among recommended rem-edies for a hurry-up lifestyle. But I was look-ing for a 30-day solution. I do have a few speed-management tech-niques. Wood carving, for example—where carving one duck feather takes 90 strokes —as well as learning classical guitar, both teach patience. I’ve also learned to eat slowly—after I heard a story about a neighbor’s grandchildren, who always giggle at dinner time. Granddad chews each bite 32 times, and they count, silently. When he reaches 32, they giggle to themselves. The Japanese Health Ministry has also recommended chewing food more than 30 times for good health. And, a study from Harbin Medical University recently mentioned in the American Journal of Clini-cal Nutrition reported that chewing 40 times caused participants to eat nearly 12 percent fewer calories. I’m also a patient driver. When a truck is riding my bumper and flashing his lights, I pull over, and I don’t beep at drivers talking on their cell phones when the light changes. But other times, the boss in my head is a fist-pounding tyrant, constantly deadlining me so I have more than my share of close calls. I bored a half-inch drill into the palm of my hand once, rushing to roof a birdhouse. Another time, I sawed off the tip of my index finger with a hacksaw, hurrying to cut a pipe for a lamp. St. Francis de Sales said, “Have patience with all things, but chiefly have patience with yourself.” The Japanese expression for taking life in small, patient steps is “kaizen.” But to de-velocitize, I needed my own lifestyle watchwords—some showstoppers. So when I overheard a friend, who was a woodcarv-er, say, “I’ve been chipping away,” I picked “Chippin’ Away” for my bookmark. Nurture the inquiring mind According to statistics, girls are the best learners. For guys, learning takes longer, because we don’t ask questions. It’s a sign of weakness. For example, we don’t ask di-rections, “Hey hombre, we don’t need no stinking GPS.” A personal example: driving home from skiing in Wilmot, Wisconsin, I took the back roads for the country charm, driving by “feel,” and expecting to eventu-ally connect with the tollway. But, when the clouds parted, I’d driven two hours into the sun—toward California. Also, guys don’t read directions. Over the years, the shortcuts I’ve used to put our kid’s toys together—“Insert metal tab A in metal slot D…”—and have cut my fingers to ribbons. These “guy” traits are exacerbated by new technology. As one media pundit said, “Tech-nology advancements for consumers mean a confusing array of products that need to be replaced soon after you buy them.“ Sadly, new tech products come with di-rections. And in our digital world—where you press “start” to turn off your computer, and error messages dissolve before you can read them—these “guy” traits are passé. Meanwhile, according to my self-help books, learning new things grows new brain cells. In fact, when I swallowed my pride and started asking directions—and reading direc-tions, it was exciting: I learned to use a chain-saw without almost cutting my foot off, to talk to my computer with voice recognition, to download free library books on our e-reader and even how to open the dreaded squeeze-and-twist top of the toilet-bowl cleaner. However, I often lapsed, and needed ac-tion words to encourage doping out the fine print instructions. I chose a mentor’s words: “Get High on Learning.” Deepak Chopra estimated we have around 65,000 thoughts a day. Most of my “stream-ing-live” thoughts are uninvited guests. I’m not alone. When I’m talking to my students, they’re checking e-mail and Face-book, texting, Tweeting and nodding their heads to their earbuds. We used to call that “scatterbrained.” My fourth lifestyle change was to lead a con-scious life, tethering the wandering mind. At times, consumed with an activity, I do pay attention. When I’m teaching, I can’t af-ford one little mistake. During “risky busi-ness”—working with power tools, whitewa-ter kayaking or driving—I’m hyper-focused. I’m also riveted reading James Thurber, Jean Shepherd and Agatha Christie. But the wandering mind is always lurking. My wife and I walk along the lake evenings. We’re both talking, but I’m not listening— sometimes for 40 minutes. Jon Kabat-Zinn in Full Catastrophe Living advises readers to practice being “in the mo-ment” by starting small; for example, while taking a shower or washing dishes. I chose weightlifting because I injured my rotator cuff looking out the window. My watch-words came from my fourth grade teacher: “Pay attention, Robert!” the demisemiquaver response Since Hans Selye’s work on stress in the 1950s, the studies on the topic could circle the globe. (For some interesting studies, ar-ticles, and self-tests on stress check nim.nih. gov/medlineplus/stress.html ). I heard a psychologist on the radio say the average person experiences 29 stressful events every day—not major stressors like losing a job or serious illness, but smaller, unexpected ones that James Thurber called “the perils of daily living.” Dylan Thomas said, “We live and die on little things.” I tried counting my stressful events one day. It was too stressful. But I can remember them: dropping my glasses in the cat litter, putting my fountain pen upside down in my shirt pocket with the cap off so it made a Rorschach test and losing my glasses in the bedroom while rushing to work. I thought, “Sit down and relax. If you don’t panic, your glasses will turn up.” They did. When I sat down, I sat on my glasses. They got lost in the pattern of the bedspread. The frames were bent beyond rec-ognition—and we had run out of duct tape. The radio psychologist advised his listen-ers to learn to become aware of stressful events as they’re happening. He said that observing the “emotional takeover” before it mInDFULmeTroPoLIS.Com all hands on deck—the uninterrupted mind When I played golf with my father, he’d say, “Keep your eye on the ball.” But I was always looking down the fairway, expecting the ball to roll 300 yards. Lately, that’s been a metaphor for my life— not focusing on what’s happening now, an-swering the siren call of the digital age. Mul-titasking (a.k.a. the 12-screen-TV mindset) has made “concentration” an anachronism. 35
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