CHANGING TEMPO

“I’m...trying to do too much...I used to be able, as most women are, to do four or five things at once. Do the juggling act. Now, if I can keep one plate in the air, that’s good.” Ursula K. Le Guin as quoted in On Women Turning 60 by Cathleen Rountree

My over 60 year old friend, Anne wonders why she’s tired. As an alcohol abuse counselor, she sees 4 or 5 clients a day, attends training lectures and presents at some of them, keeps her own home and has a wide circle of friends that she has a hard time saying “no” to. She’s tired because she hasn’t learned the fine of art of pacing herself---of dancing to a slower (no less productive) tempo.

Each week we have 168 hours, 10,080 minutes...to work, play and sleep. More than likely, you spend the better part of those 168 hours trying to get too much done---rushing, dashing, scurrying. In the mid-twentieth century, futurists predicted that computers and other labor-saving devices would free up time and transform America into the most leisurely society in history---exactly the opposite happened.

In this age of rapidly expanding technology and consumerism how can one fashion a simple, slower paced life? If you buzz from one chore to the next, from one activity to the next, how can you enjoy your world? For instance, I try not to concern my self with slow moving traffic or traffic jams. I see an opportunity each time to see the world a little more clearly. I consider this my private time to enjoy the quietness of just being, of stopping to look and to feel and to think---and to indulge myself in a changing tempo.

The rule that we must be accomplishing something all the time is broadcast so efficiently and so early in this society that we internalize it. We struggle with a seditious inner voice that says, “You’re wasting time. Get up and do something with your life.” Life is going so fast all around us. We’re expected (or maybe we expect ourselves) to respond to it in the same way we did when were 20. Does age oblige one to keep up with the latest in technological advances in the culture---internet shopping, online services, etc. -- in order not to be out of step? Or, does one have the privilege by virtue of age of opting out or being selective in one’s adoption of this new way of existing? Personally, I prefer pen and paper for personal notes and meandering slowly through a gift shop as opposed to clicking my way around the internet.

Author, Mary C. Morrison (Let Evening Come) believes as children leave home, friends move away and companions die, that we have an opportunity to move into a “discovery-filled solitude” and that we can discover there what our own tempo of living is. Now that my children are out in the world, I’m experiencing this tempo change in my own life. I must admit, I like the new pace. How do you feel about the idea of changing tempo?