Freedom to move in slow motion
We all have a lot of reasons to hurry. To rush.
I’ve been feeling it quite a bit in my recent years and it’s not getting better as I get older. The inner wheel just starts spinning… Faster and faster and faster. It wobbles and flails and the axle is about to break. The hands of the clock inside our minds start to accelerate until they’re a blur.
You know this feeling?…
We have so much coming at us these days. A half dozen text conversations at any given time. Countless emails to get to. How about those social media notifications? Can’t just let those little red numbers sit there, right? We overschedule our kids as well as ourselves. We make life complicated because, well, everyone else does. Then there’s the news… The wars, the viruses, the fires, the end of the world…
Spin, spin, spin.
Faster, faster, faster.
The other day, I noticed this spinning when I was hanging up wallboards in our living room (I’m on a bit of a home improvement kick at the moment). I wanted to get this one entire wall done before I started cooking dinner, but I kept running into snags. It took fooooor-ever. I got three little boards up in like an hour. I ended up popping off on my daughter because she was the closest human in proximity to me at the moment.
That’s when the regret kicked in.
Ugh.. What the hell? Why?
This happens a lot when we’re leaving the house on the way to school or another planned event. Parents, you know this feeling. It seems you’re never on time. It’s well past time to go, so you rush and you stomp around and you yell and everyone gets even more stressed and you leave in a huff and realize ten minutes down the road that you forgot your daughter’s backpack… So you have to turn around and get it and you’re now waaaaaay later than you first thought.
Well, I’ve been trying something that sometimes helps (though I forgot it in my home renovation example above)…
When I feel that inner clock spinning, the first thing I do is look at it. And then, I tell myself to ignore it. To not move by its time.
It’s an illusory mechanism that’s overly wound up by all of life’s various anxieties and stressors. It is not God’s time and therefore it’s not your time. God’s time is totally and forever complete in the ever-eternal NOW.
So that means I can call nonsense on that crackhead clock. I can close my eyes and breathe into my body. I can relax my shoulders. I can allow myself to be (gulp) late (I know, FEARLESS, RIGHT?!). I can move in slow motion.
When we move on God’s time of the eternal now, we are free to move in slow motion.
Yes, slow-ass motion. I can wind that inner clock down. And when I do, whatever I’m doing gets done way more thoroughly (though maybe not “on time”). I can set it down and come back to it because the bullshit expectation that my ego has set for me has been exposed for the illusion it is.
Sometimes, it even gets done faster — it can serve as a bit of a time warp, this entering into God-time.
What’s weird is, when I’ve done this, I’m not late (though sometimes, I’m cutting it pretty darn close). No one’s feelings are hurt. People are in good spirits. We have the backpack. The wall will still be there tomorrow. And all is well.
God-time, y’all. It’s right here. Now.
