Walking in Beauty: Living an Unhurried Life

By Royal E. Alsup, Ph.D.

It is difficult to live an unhurried life in our fast paced world, especially when being busy and productive is recognized by our society as praiseworthy. Appearing industrious and hardworking appeases one's inner tyrannical parent, which is a subpersonality that exerts pressure from within the personality to act in a certain manner or to present a particular persona to the world. It is patterned after a person's real parents who may have scolded them as a child for being lazy, and from other authoritarian figures, such as teachers or bosses. The inner tyrannical parent does not permit a person to live at a leisurely pace. The problem is that being in a constant hurry does not allow time for love to be felt to its fullest extent, which is the goal of healthy parenting and family life. The inner tyrannical parent with its habitual hurriedness must be re-educated by using practices aimed at learning to slow down.

This article was heavily influenced by Sri Eknath Easwaran's book, Take Your Time: Finding Balance in a Hurried World. Slowing down is one part of Sri Easwaran's Eight-Point Program that also includes meditation, silent repetition of a mantram, one-pointed attention, training the senses, putting others first, spiritual companionship, and reading the mystics. Easwaran came to the United States from India by ship in 1960. As he disembarked from the Queen Elizabeth in New York City, he could not believe how people and cars were racing all over the place. He made a vow never to get stuck in the fast-paced lifestyle he observed in this country. He developed his Eight-Point Program to help people follow the Buddha's instruction to aim for intentional living, which means living a life of kindness. It is difficult to live a life of kindness when we are in such a hurry.

Intentional living is being awake and being aware of how our energies influence and infect others. For instance, anger is highly contagious. In family therapy sessions, I sometimes use a ball to symbolize anger, having an angry family member hold the ball while they express their rage. As they listen, other family members begin to feel angry. When the first person is finished talking, someone else asks for the "anger ball" to be passed to them and they begin to speak. The ball is transferred from person to person as the anger circulates through the group. The faster the minds of the family members move, the more the impatience and anger are felt. The family members start motioning and begging for the ball to be passed to them immediately, so that they can express their own anger. The passing of the ball provides a physical representation of how family members' intensity of anger increases as the speed of their minds increases. Often, while participating in such a demonstration of the infectiousness of anger and the negative results of frantic thinking, we all end up laughing.

Native peoples inoculate themselves from the stress of modern life by slowing down the pace of living. In the early 1970s, I started working with local American Indians. I was raised in Los Angeles and had lived in the San Francisco Bay Area for many years. Being hurried and frantically active felt familiar and normal to me, and I was not aware that my frenzied lifestyle was literally killing me. The local Indians taught me to slow down, saying, Take it easy. Everything happens when it is supposed to happen. They presented the possibility of a lifestyle based on the sacredness of relationships. Living at a fast pace makes it difficult to care for and respect the other people in our family and community. Loving and respectful relationships demand that we slow down.

Hupa and Yurok people have talked to me about getting up before dawn as a way to slow the day down. Some of the local people say that if the sun catches you out of bed you will have a long life. Learning to slow down by getting up early helps take care of the No. 1 killer -- stress. When we get up early, there is time to meditate and to get centered before the other family members arise. Having the silence of the morning to ourselves before the rush of getting to school and work makes us more tolerant with our children and our partner.

To slow down, we have to look at our priorities. When American Indians talk about their priorities, they put their family relationships first. For parents, nourishing the relationship with their children is a good, healthy priority. The Information Society in which we live is addictive and takes valuable time from our families. Slowing down involves paying attention to how much time we spend with our children and balancing that with the time we spend following our own pursuits.

Many families come to therapy sessions arguing about issues that result from the hurrying effects of technology on family life. One adolescent complained that his mother comes home from work and then goes straight to the computer to check out her email. Three hours later, she emerges exhausted from the computer room and retires to bed. There is no time to relate to her son, to ask about his day, or to help him solve his social problems. Being in a constant hurry to get new information by surfing the Internet or checking our email is the opposite of slowing down. Such a frantic attempt to stuff as much information as possible into the day may take a high toll on family health. This is not living intentionally and with kindness. It is living with a hurried mind; and a hurried mind so easily becomes an angry mind.

Technology is not inherently bad. In today's Information Society, however, the important role that technology plays in our lives needs scrutiny. Being involved in information processes can bring about violence to ourselves, our children, and our families by causing us to be hurried. The addictive quality of information technology frequently steals time from family life. The computer can create a new kind of latchkey kid when parents come home from work but are relationally absent because they are checking out their email and answering the messages that cannot wait, or they are hanging out in Internet chat rooms. Sadly, computer-based relationships sometimes take priority over relationships with our loved ones in the other room, leaving our children or our spouse feeling abandoned.

In psychotherapy I have also heard the opposite complaint -- that someone's child is constantly on the Internet. Schools put pressure on adolescents to hurry and get new information so that they can compete successfully. The student who is able to obtain information rapidly is in a better position to get superior grades. In today's academic arena the quick mind is highly rewarded. The challenge is to combine a keen ability to think and to process information quickly, with the capacity to slow down, to live intentionally and with kindness toward others.

Information is power is a motivating conviction in modern life that does not encourage learning how to slow down and relax. The idea that information can help us to control the outcome of our lives drives us to learn how to accumulate and process more and more information as efficiently as possible. Carl Jung once said that information is important only if it can be integrated into our being and only if it helps to bring about self-transformation. The accumulation of information needs to be slowed down in order for a person to integrate it. We cannot just keep accumulating information and expect to be nonviolent and respectful to others.

A speeded-up mind and frenetic activity can lead to violence at worst and to a lack of consideration for others at the very least. Civility and manners are forgotten when we cut off someone on Highway 101 because we are in a hurry to get from Eureka to McKinleyville. When the mind starts moving very fast, you cannot be bothered about your neighbor or a stranger. A common yet misguided modern attitude is that if I can speed myself up, I can be more competitive and successful. No wonder amphetamines are so popular. Some people use drugs to speed themselves up because they feel like they cannot move fast enough or effectively enough, or to slow themselves down because their mind is racing out of control. The use of drugs or alcohol not only leads eventually to inefficiency and ruptured relationships.

Love demands that we cultivate the ability to slow down, to set priorities that encourage health, creativity and nonviolence, and to learn beneficial ways to reduce the stress of modern life. Sri Easwaren and American Indians would agree that slowing down does not mean being inefficient. By slowing down one is better able to achieve lasting and authentic competence and peace. Leading an unhurried life and slowing the day down are ways of truly walking in beauty.

References

Easwaran, E. (1978). Meditation: Commonsense Directions for an Uncommon Life. Tomales, CA: Nilgiri Press.

Easwaran, E. (1994). Take Your Time: Finding Balance in a Hurried World. Tomales, CA: Nilgiri Press