Slowing down
JUN PRADO
Panay News
I TOLD my bosom buddy in a private company last week that I needed a quick hair cut. At our age, my sympathetic doctor told me, we have to slow down.
Everything slows down anyway, I said. The pulse rate, the heart beat and the mental reflexes.
But I knew what he meant. No longer 30, we should no longer take on certain activities, even at a slower rate. It’s time now to work smart rather than to work hard, which is a sensible enough thing to do, except that working itself has become harder.
As well as other things, besides. Shaving, for example, is no longer a snap. If we aren’t careful, we cut ourselves. Electric shavers are no solution, at least for me. They don’t give as clean a shave as the misnamed safety razors.
And, with a self-styled moustache like mine, you can’t shave with an electric shaver, can you? Sometimes, some smart alecky chap would ask me: “What’s so important with your nose, fella that it has to be underlined?” Stupid.
Bathing and showering also require alertness, particularly on marble floors. Going down and up a flight of stairs can be fraught with danger. In being alert and careful, these ordinary activities are necessarily slowed down.
And it could be fatal if one accomplished them while thinking of something else when, before, one could even hum and reflect on ideas at the same time.
The problem is, “as time goes by,” one becomes more and more aware that there are “so many promises to keep,” so many miles to walk. It’s not only the young who are in a hurry, but to them it’s just a matter of course. To the elderly, however, there’s an even greater sense of urgency.
And so we find many mature people apparently as busy and as pressed as the young. The young can’t wait for time to pass, the old wish that time would stop for whatever projects they have in mind.
There’s no getting away from the fact that time passes so quickly. Time does fly. One realizes that there isn’t enough of it for everything.
This is where “slowing down” becomes a process of “cutting down.” To slow down then means learning to discriminate ruthlessly. Management experts call it “prioritizing,” but, to us, it’s a constant decision of discrimination.
As a writer, I have to make a daily decision on what to read and write. Mind you, it is sheer agony, for there can’t be only one or two interesting things to write about.
Above all, this is the burden on understanding. For if one only reads what one immediately understands, one doesn’t have the feeling of having advanced or accomplished something.
Discrimination does not only apply to reading and writing; it also applies to one’s social life. If you apply it to meeting new people, there’s the danger of missing old relationships.
Friendships need as much care as gardens. To meet “someone new” can lead to losing what couldn’t be lost, the opportunity of enriching one’s life as well as others’.
In the end, in my case, one makes the fateful choice: stick to the friends of many years and miss the opportunity of cultivating new ones.
Read the Bible!
JUN PRADO
Panay News
I TOLD my bosom buddy in a private company last week that I needed a quick hair cut. At our age, my sympathetic doctor told me, we have to slow down.
Everything slows down anyway, I said. The pulse rate, the heart beat and the mental reflexes.
But I knew what he meant. No longer 30, we should no longer take on certain activities, even at a slower rate. It’s time now to work smart rather than to work hard, which is a sensible enough thing to do, except that working itself has become harder.
As well as other things, besides. Shaving, for example, is no longer a snap. If we aren’t careful, we cut ourselves. Electric shavers are no solution, at least for me. They don’t give as clean a shave as the misnamed safety razors.
And, with a self-styled moustache like mine, you can’t shave with an electric shaver, can you? Sometimes, some smart alecky chap would ask me: “What’s so important with your nose, fella that it has to be underlined?” Stupid.
Bathing and showering also require alertness, particularly on marble floors. Going down and up a flight of stairs can be fraught with danger. In being alert and careful, these ordinary activities are necessarily slowed down.
And it could be fatal if one accomplished them while thinking of something else when, before, one could even hum and reflect on ideas at the same time.
The problem is, “as time goes by,” one becomes more and more aware that there are “so many promises to keep,” so many miles to walk. It’s not only the young who are in a hurry, but to them it’s just a matter of course. To the elderly, however, there’s an even greater sense of urgency.
And so we find many mature people apparently as busy and as pressed as the young. The young can’t wait for time to pass, the old wish that time would stop for whatever projects they have in mind.
There’s no getting away from the fact that time passes so quickly. Time does fly. One realizes that there isn’t enough of it for everything.
This is where “slowing down” becomes a process of “cutting down.” To slow down then means learning to discriminate ruthlessly. Management experts call it “prioritizing,” but, to us, it’s a constant decision of discrimination.
As a writer, I have to make a daily decision on what to read and write. Mind you, it is sheer agony, for there can’t be only one or two interesting things to write about.
Above all, this is the burden on understanding. For if one only reads what one immediately understands, one doesn’t have the feeling of having advanced or accomplished something.
Discrimination does not only apply to reading and writing; it also applies to one’s social life. If you apply it to meeting new people, there’s the danger of missing old relationships.
Friendships need as much care as gardens. To meet “someone new” can lead to losing what couldn’t be lost, the opportunity of enriching one’s life as well as others’.
In the end, in my case, one makes the fateful choice: stick to the friends of many years and miss the opportunity of cultivating new ones.
Read the Bible!
No comments:
Post a Comment