Five Ways to Take Control of Our Runaway Lives
Faster chips, faster computers, faster phones, faster news, faster food, faster product cycles, faster trades, faster bodies, faster brains, faster kids, faster lives. Ritalin, Adderall. Faster is always better, or, so we are told.
But the faster we run, the farther behind we fall. What can we do to break this frenzied cycle? Here are five tips.
1. Read a really long and demanding book.
Many people are reading and writing more today than ever before but they are reading and writing differently – short, quick, and to the point. Reading serious books takes time, and develops virtues that are sorely needed but undervalued in our wired world. Reflection, concentration, patience, and sensitivity to obscurity, subtlety and complexity. Don’t read books that matter on a screen – the word appears different on the printed page. The physical book lends works a weight, texture, and smell that are lost on the screen. Avoid rushing, skipping, and skimming. Read slowly, then flip back and forth to reread what you have just read. Pause to underline significant lines and dog-ear memorable pages. Keep a bound paper notebook where you record your thoughts and questions. When you finally finish the book, send a handwritten letter to a friend you have not been in touch with for a long time about what the book means to you.
2. Resist the new new thing.
The thousands of people camped out and standing in line for days outside Apple stores have been conned into thinking that newer is always better. The iPhone had been introduced just before Obama was elected president, and there has been a new model every year he has been in office. The trick of the sale is to create desire where there is no need. What is advertised as innovation is really a strategy for expanding the market by accelerating product churn. Before you work longer to earn money to buy the new new thing, ask yourself, Will it make my life better or just be one more thing that makes me do what I really do not want to do?
3. Set aside one hour each week to sit alone silently and reflect.
Oscar Wilde once observed, “Doing nothing is awfully hard work” – especially for speed addicts. Important thinking must be done alone in silence, without the relentless distractions of our noisy world. But silence has become as rare as darkness. When was the last time silence surrounded you, or you were in a completely dark room with all the electronic devices unplugged and no little red, green, orange and blue lights blinking? Take out the ear buds, turn off your phone and monitors. Just sit quietly and think. It doesn’t matter where you begin – it might be a trivial event from the day before, a problem you have been trying to avoid, an idea you have not had time to ponder. Let your mind wander freely and it will take you places you have never imagined.
4. Cut your own grass.
I never fully trust anyone who doesn’t cut his or her own grass. Surrounded by screens and living in bubbles, we have forgotten the pleasures of physical labor and have lost touch with the material and natural world. Play has become work, and exercise has become an obsession. A seven-minute workout, an hour on the treadmill, or a timed run while listening to your iPod is not a break from the frantic pace of life but an extension of it. Leave your virtual world behind and take time to come back down to earth. Get your hands dirty, lift heavy rocks, tend beautiful plants, find pleasure in physical labor. Earth has a rhythm of its own that cannot be rushed, and when you lose touch with earth, you lose our humanity. If you slow down long enough to cultivate reflection by cultivating earth, the axis of reality sometimes shifts, even if ever so slightly.
5. Try to imagine your last act.
Whenever you face an important decision, try to imagine what that decision will look like when you reflect on it near the end of your life. Values shift with age. If you pause long enough to reflect, you will discover that what seems important during the morning and noon of life often appears to have been a meaningless distraction as evening approaches. Why were you in such a hurry? What was that haste all about? Why were you unwilling to pause, to tarry, to linger? If time is the most precious thing you have, why do you let so much of it slip away?
Mark C. Taylor is Chair of the Department of Religion at Columbia University and the author of “Speed Limits: Where Time Went and Why We Have so Little Left.”
By Mark C. Taylor
Five Ways to Take Control of Our Runaway Lives
But the faster we run, the farther behind we fall. What can we do to break this frenzied cycle? Here are five tips.
1. Read a really long and demanding book.
Many people are reading and writing more today than ever before but they are reading and writing differently – short, quick, and to the point. Reading serious books takes time, and develops virtues that are sorely needed but undervalued in our wired world. Reflection, concentration, patience, and sensitivity to obscurity, subtlety and complexity. Don’t read books that matter on a screen – the word appears different on the printed page. The physical book lends works a weight, texture, and smell that are lost on the screen. Avoid rushing, skipping, and skimming. Read slowly, then flip back and forth to reread what you have just read. Pause to underline significant lines and dog-ear memorable pages. Keep a bound paper notebook where you record your thoughts and questions. When you finally finish the book, send a handwritten letter to a friend you have not been in touch with for a long time about what the book means to you.
2. Resist the new new thing.
The thousands of people camped out and standing in line for days outside Apple stores have been conned into thinking that newer is always better. The iPhone had been introduced just before Obama was elected president, and there has been a new model every year he has been in office. The trick of the sale is to create desire where there is no need. What is advertised as innovation is really a strategy for expanding the market by accelerating product churn. Before you work longer to earn money to buy the new new thing, ask yourself, Will it make my life better or just be one more thing that makes me do what I really do not want to do?
3. Set aside one hour each week to sit alone silently and reflect.
Oscar Wilde once observed, “Doing nothing is awfully hard work” – especially for speed addicts. Important thinking must be done alone in silence, without the relentless distractions of our noisy world. But silence has become as rare as darkness. When was the last time silence surrounded you, or you were in a completely dark room with all the electronic devices unplugged and no little red, green, orange and blue lights blinking? Take out the ear buds, turn off your phone and monitors. Just sit quietly and think. It doesn’t matter where you begin – it might be a trivial event from the day before, a problem you have been trying to avoid, an idea you have not had time to ponder. Let your mind wander freely and it will take you places you have never imagined.
4. Cut your own grass.
I never fully trust anyone who doesn’t cut his or her own grass. Surrounded by screens and living in bubbles, we have forgotten the pleasures of physical labor and have lost touch with the material and natural world. Play has become work, and exercise has become an obsession. A seven-minute workout, an hour on the treadmill, or a timed run while listening to your iPod is not a break from the frantic pace of life but an extension of it. Leave your virtual world behind and take time to come back down to earth. Get your hands dirty, lift heavy rocks, tend beautiful plants, find pleasure in physical labor. Earth has a rhythm of its own that cannot be rushed, and when you lose touch with earth, you lose our humanity. If you slow down long enough to cultivate reflection by cultivating earth, the axis of reality sometimes shifts, even if ever so slightly.
Whenever you face an important decision, try to imagine what that decision will look like when you reflect on it near the end of your life. Values shift with age. If you pause long enough to reflect, you will discover that what seems important during the morning and noon of life often appears to have been a meaningless distraction as evening approaches. Why were you in such a hurry? What was that haste all about? Why were you unwilling to pause, to tarry, to linger? If time is the most precious thing you have, why do you let so much of it slip away?
Mark C. Taylor is Chair of the Department of Religion at Columbia University and the author of “Speed Limits: Where Time Went and Why We Have so Little Left.”
By Mark C. Taylor
Five Ways to Take Control of Our Runaway Lives
posted by Zo Heri at 7:15 PM
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