I recently put away my coffee maker and microwave. I want to slow down, create some space for, well, me. I had noticed I was missing things, moving from one task to the other, head down. Technology speeds things up and that is not always a healthy thing. The Internet gives me access to information and communication with a speed I could have not have imagined a few years ago. Coffee makers allow me to push a button (unless I use the timer) for my morning coffee and the microwave, well, with my microwave I can heat things and cook things in a fraction of the time it took me when I used oven and stove.

But to what end?

Why is it so important to do these things at high speed? Do I benefit? Am I getting more done? And can someone please define what more actually is?

If I want my life to be about work, household tasks, making or returning phone calls, reading or sending e-mails, then yes, speeding things up with technology allows me to complete more of these tasks in a given day. But that is not what life is about, at least not my life. I cannot tell you what to decide about yours. I look around me and I see most people caught up and frenzied with so much work and so many chores there is little room left for anything else. So many of us, me included, rush past the very moment we are in without so much as a pause. After all, we have things to do!

I have decided to disengage from as much speeding up of my life as possible. I do this for several reasons. First, I am missing things I do not want to miss. The other day, stirring a warming pot of food, I heard birds singing outside. As the scent of food drifts up to me, their notes fill the air like jewels. I would have missed this had I pushed a button on my microwave and hurried back to my writing task.

Recently I adopted a puppy I named Charley after Charley in John Steinbeck’s “Travels with Charley.” McKenzie, my seven-year-old female German Shepherd has taken on the role of Charley’s mother. They love to wrestle and roughhouse in the kitchen. Heating my food in a pot affords me the opportunity to watch this miracle of life; the older dog teaching the younger dog. Charley, who has yet to be in the same room with coordination, by the way. Charley leaps at the nape of ‘Kenzie’s neck only to miss and land on the floor, a jumble of perpetually moving legs and elbows (are they elbows?). In another moment Charley is spread eagled on his back and ‘Kenzie checks him head to toe, finishing off her inspection with a lick to his nose. I would have missed this if I was using my microwave.

Slowing down, learning to pause and be in the moment, allows us stillness, allows us to be with ourselves, something so many of us avoid for so many of us have, one way or the other, been given the message we are bad people. More often than not, that message is pure myth with no relationship to our internal reality. Yet when we get this message long enough we learn to believe it. So, while slowing down may at first bring about some unsettling experiences, if you hang in there long enough, you will likely get past them and begin to discover that all along you have been a truly good person. And who wouldn’t like to spend time with a good person?

And then there is this. Slowing down has brought me closer to my family again. My father and mother and my grandparents all cooked on stoves and used ovens. Engaging in these tasks today makes me feel close to them. I am doing things they did and perhaps, in some small way, this affords me the chance to feel what they felt, live moments they lived, and in doing so, they are with me again.

It seems to me that slowing things down opens doors to some precious experiences in life. And hey, I can wait for my coffee or my food to warm. My father did. And if it was good enough for him, it is good enough for me.

– Good morning, Smerkle Grumpy.
– Good morning.
– Thanks for meeting with us again so soon.
– More than welcome, more than welcome.
– So what’s on your mind this morning?
– Mythology.
– Mythology?
– Yes. All of us, or most of us it seems, are tangled up in our respective societies. Our governments, religions, economics, educational offerings, all that. Yet, I think we are missing something.
– How so?
– Well, somewhere recently, actually I think I was watching an old clip of Bill Graham preaching, back in 1979 I think it was, up in Nova Scotia.
– You love Nova Scotia.
– I do, very much. Anyway, he was talking about idolatry. And while it would be entirely disingenuous of me to say I am a practicing Christian, he said something which was spot on then and spot on now. He said we worship ourselves. Humanity worships itself and is, my add-on here, entirely self absorbed. King talked about –
– Dr. King?
– Yes. He talked about our arrogance, how we need to humble up a bit, that the universe is not all about us. Yes, we are part of it, but we don’t own it. The universe is not here to do our bidding.
– Can we go back for a moment?
– Sure.
– How does humanity worship itself?
– Many of us bask in our material creations, in material things, our material selves as if materialism was what matters most. I want a fancier car, a larger home, more money, the fastest computer, the most oil, the fastest plane, the largest muscles. We think that all of life is about us and so we worship us, and that is dangerous to the spirit.
– What are we missing?
– Life. We are missing life.
– Life?
– Large parts of it. How many of us are in such a rush to get to this place or that place that we don’t notice the beauty of an early morning or a sunset of the shape of the clouds in the sky? How many of us pause for a moment to look at the sky, much less consider for a moment that the cloud choreography they are witnessing will never happen again for all time. That every leaf, every bird, everything in nature is unique, nothing that repeats is an exact replica of what came before and therein lies the beauty, the magic and wonder of it all. None of this is beholden to humankind. Life was going on just fine long before we got here.

We wake up in the morning; heads soon buried in newspapers or the Internet or newscasts reeking of all that is wrong and horrible and then scamper off to make money, as much as we can because we are socialized into believing this is our mission, our purpose. Climb the ladder. And it’s a myth! There is no ladder! There is life, and so many forget to live it. We live slivers of it and forget to breathe it all in.
– That’s unsettling.
– It should be.
– What do we do?
– Humble up and live. Don’t build your life on the expectations of others, and by others I mean the society you live in. Life itself, all of life, is so much larger than any society or political design. You can find the answer in a rainfall.
– How so?
– When rain falls it strikes every surface that breaks its fall?
– Yes.
– It does not differentiate between countries or governments. It does not care whether someone is black or white or Asian or Latino of Middle Eastern. It doesn’t care of someone is gay or straight, married or unmarried. It doesn’t care about the belief systems of those living under the roof on which it plays its rhythm.
– And the rain is?
– Life. Life happens to all of us and is around all of us whether we like it or not, and if we accept this reality and allow ourselves to live it, the rewards, the joy, the happiness, the exhilaration is beyond description.
– Thank you.
– For what?
– Clarity, waking us a bit more.
– You’re more than welcome. We’ll talk again soon.
– Thank you, Smerkle Grumpy.

– Good morning.
– And good morning to you.
– About time we sat down.
– So they tell me.
– So what’s on your mind these days?
– A general frustration with a lot of things, my own government and my people.
– Because?
– We have a bunch of folks in leadership on both sides of the aisle that knew damned well we were sending our kids to war based on phoney-up intelligence. They should be jailed. There a very few clean hands in Washington and the idea that there are essentially two parties in this country, Democrat and Republican, is basically phoney as well.
– How so?
– There is one party when it comes down to it.
– That is?
– The government. Period. Not the design of the government. Churchill said, “Democracy is the worst form of government in the world, except for all the others” and he was right. But the majority of those in government now are more concerned about keeping their jobs than preserving what democracy is about.
– And the war?
– One of the biggest lines of crap you hear about the war is we are safer, that we haven’t been attacked since 9/11. The problem with that view is we’ve had nearly 4,000 of our kids killed over there, thousands injured, and God knows how many Iraqis and Afghans killed and maimed. They don’t have to attack us here, they can kill us there. How is 4,000 American dead not suffering losses since 9/11?
– Good point.
– Anything else on your mind Smerkle Grumpy?
– Yes – many things, but we can talk about it another time.
– Soon?
– Yes – soon.

Life happens to us whether we like it or not. Neither the stained shirt nor ironed crease protects us from its touch. High School drop outs and Ivy League grads are subject to its touch. The presence or absence of wallet or purse holds no sway over reality. Yet so many of us, me included, have invested a great deal in living anywhere but our own life. Is this subjective on my part? Of course it is. But to my mind there is very little, if anything, that is not, at its core, subjective.

This ain’t a movie, folks. The longer I live and the more I look around, the more I see people acting like they are the people they believe they others say they are supposed to be rather than being the people they are. I see people acting like friends rather than being friends, acting like they are in a relationship, rather than being in the relationship. I’ve seen and been in relationships that present a highly polished exterior when in truth broken parts rusted quietly and not so quietly under the hood. Two good people terrified of letting go of each other, despite their unhappiness.

A friend of mine recently said to me, “You seem to require a mountain of evidence to end a relationship, more than most people.” I was surprised, very. My friend feels that because of my background, which includes its fair share of abandonment and betrayal, my loyalty includes a vein that runs deep and strong and wants to protect someone from the pain I felt when abandoned and betrayed. Perhaps he is right. I do know there are times I am baffled and times I am flat out horrified by the indifference and insensitivity people who claim to like and love each other are capable of inflicting on one another. Is this because so many have donned roles rather than our own lives and are now incapable of measuring their impact on others with any degree of accuracy?

For me, much of this comes down to loyalty. But loyalty to what? Loyalty to the reality that each person’s humanity is equal to our own. If you love someone, the loyalty must be complete and thorough and cannot rest on a nest of caveats. For it to be loyalty, it must be pure. After all, this ain’t a movie we’re in.