“We’re a species that rushes through everything, then complains that time flies.” – Steve Maraboli
“When we rush, we skim the surface, and fail to make real connections with the world or other people.” – Carl Honoré
“Once she stopped rushing through life, she was amazed how much more life she had time for.” – Unknown
The other day my daughter asked me why I set timers for myself throughout the day. I set alarms that remind me when it’s time to leave for an appointment, or when it’s almost time for a client call. I do this so that I don’t have to keep watching the clock. I find constantly watching the clock takes me out of the moment and that is not helpful for my intention to be fully present IN the moment. So, I have alarms that remind me of the time. That lessens my mental load, and allows me to simply BE in the moment and enjoy the moment, because I don’t have to worry about missing a call.
And of course, with the wisdom and brilliance of a 6-year-old, my daughter shared her insights from what she understood about why I have alarms that go off throughout the day. And I thought I needed to share this wisdom with all of you, because we can all learn from it…
My daughter said that life is like moving through a big house with many rooms and you have one of two options: you can spend time in each room, observing, noticing, appreciating, or you could simply rush for the door so you can get to the next room. If you spend most of your time racing for the door, you experience your life as just a series of doors that you are running through, and you don’t even notice what is happening in the rooms that you are passing through.
And I loved this metaphor. It has so much depth. When we slow down to just BE in the room, we get to appreciate the room for what it brings. We get to savour and enjoy. We get to explore the room. Eventually we will find the door to the next room, but we will have ensured that we fully explored THIS room before moving on to the next room. That lends a much richer lens to life.
And sometimes we want to leave a specific room, because we don’t like it. It’s an unpleasant or uncomfortable experience. However, I’ve discovered that often when we avoid a specific room, or we rush to get out of it, we inevitably find ourselves back in that room again at some point, because life has this way of brining us the same experiences over and over again, until we are willing to slow down and learn the lesson.
So, as uncomfortable as a specific room might be, know that you will eventually leave this room too, and you want to ensure that you’ve taken everything you can from the room so that you don’t have to return to it. As hard as it might be, ask yourself, “What am I meant to learn from this room?” and let yourself have the learning from it, so that you can close the door fully on the room and not have to return to it.
I also find that with some doors – especially the ones the lead to grief – they tend to be circular. We always find ourselves back at the same door, entering the room of grief. The room of grief can feel dark and unsafe. And it’s not intended to be. Grief is meant to be a room where we slow down, where we pause, were we comfort ourselves, where we celebrate the love we’ve lost and continue to yearn for, where we are again reminded of the preciousness and the impermanence of life. Grief doesn’t have to be a dark, empty room. Grief could be a room where we remember, where we honour, where we rest for a moment. There is always a door out. It might just take us some time to find it.
And for those of us who rush through doors, we tend to even rush through the fun, exciting, and celebratory rooms. We tend to not even stop to really take in the rooms that truly bring us joy. I always find it so curious that some of us tend to rush away from celebration and joy, to whatever is next, without even considering just how many doors we have had to open and move through to get to this special room. We work so hard chasing THIS very room, and then when we finally arrive here, we don’t stop to take it in and really notice what it’s like to BE in this room.
I’m reminded of the beautiful song by Nicole Nordeman called Slow Down, where she shares that her child was everything she wanted, and then she makes this simple request of her child, “Slow down. Won’t you stay here, a minute more? I know you want to walk through the door, but it’s all too fast. Let’s make it last a little while…? I pointed to the sky. And now you want to fly. I am your biggest fan, I hope you know I am, but do you think you can somehow, slow down…?”
There are few things as visceral as watching your child grow up right in front of you, to remind you just how quickly life actually goes, and how much can change in but a few decades. Nothing reminds us more of us our mortality and the mystery of life, than seeing someone else evolve in front of your eyes, and still being able to remember what it was like when they could fit in our arms or fall asleep on our chest… And the question I have is why would I want to rush through each of these rooms? Why would I want to hasten a process that already feels like it is going too fast?
I want to stay a minute longer in THIS room, and simply BE here with what it has to offer, before opening the door to the next room. Sometimes people, expectations, and societal pressures has us believing we need to rush to get to the next door, but what if the gift is staying present to THIS room and letting the door find us?
In the words of Steve Maraboli, “We’re a species that rushes through everything, then complains that time flies.” So, what if we could simply slow down and let everything we long for, everything we are chasing, catch us? Often the thing we want is right in front of us, but we are so busy rushing that we don’t slow down to SEE it. We don’t even realise that the very thing we want might be closer than we think. What are you missing because you are rushing through your life? What might you discover if you were to slow down and take in the room?