Slow Like Me
My adventures at half speed
March/April 1997
By Jon Spayde, Utne Reader
It was an assignment any writer would be intrigued by, if only for the ironies.
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"What I want you to do," said Utne editor Hugh Delehanty as we sat in the magazine's production room munching chocolate-covered pretzels, "is try to live your life at a slower pace for a while. See if it can really be done. Then write about it for the magazine."
My boss was ordering me to slow down! Very Utne. And a clever match of subject and writer. Hugh had seen me on many a caffeine jag, dashing through the Utne corridors like Aldrich Ames on his way to the paper shredder. But did he know that I could also sit staring at the lower left corner of my computer monitor for half an hour, up to my eyeballs in the paralysis of procrastination? I hoped not.
No, time and I were not pals. So doing this story might teach me something.
But I smelled a rat.
"What about here at work?" I asked. "Am I supposed to slow down here too?"
Hugh made a little back-and-forth motion with his pretzel that could have meant either "within limits" or--more ominously--"that's up to you."
"Deal," I said.
Deciding to live simply can be time-consuming--you have to unload clothes at Goodwill, reconfigure your budget, sell your car, plant a garden--but you can start living slowly without losing a second. I took a deep breath, gently nibbled the last chocolate pretzel, and (slowly) pulled on my coat. Heading down the office stairs, I made a special effort to transform my usual jerky gallop into a serene one-step-at-a-time glide, what Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh calls "walking meditation" in his eloquent books about mindfulness. One step. Another step. Another.
It sucked.
It was taking me forever to go down the stairs.
I began to feel a jab in my chest, just behind my sternum. It was my little inner New Yorker, flailing his little arms and yelling, "Hurry up, moron!"
I am not a New Yorker--I come from small-town Iowa. But I did spend eight years in Manhattan, where I perfected my rapid-fire speech, my tendency to constantly vocalize vague worries, and my general air of being pursued by inquisitors out of Dostoevsky. In the process, I had fed and groomed this impatient little guy. And he was definitely not happy about this project.
My first serious experiment with slowness came at the dinner table that evening. I told my partner, Laurie, that I was going to try to eat without rushing.
"Good idea," Laurie said, rolling her eyes. I can eat an entire Cornish hen in the time it takes her to unfold her napkin.
I dangled my spoon in my soup for a while. I breathed. Then with awkward deliberation I raised a single spoonful of tomato bisque to my lips, splashing a little back into my bowl. I tried to savor the warm soup as it went down. It hit my stomach and roused an immense, rolling hunger pang.
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