Slow Lane

Issue 122
By Peggy O'Mara 

In the mornings I love to watch the birds frolic on the feeders outside my bedroom window. I put seed, suet, and water out for them. In late fall, there are red-shafted flickers, hairy woodpeckers, finches, chickadees, nuthatches, and, of course, jays. Sometimes there are hawks in the air, and always ravens at the compost. This summer we had our usual share of raccoons, who also love the bird food and groom themselves in the water. We saw so many squirrels at the feeders this summer that we took to naming them. Deer and bear furtively enjoy our flowers and fruit trees.

I learn a lot from these animals and from their habits during the changing seasons here. There's a resilience, a steadiness, a survival that inspires. The animals and the woods are my companions and recognize me as I pass by. I love living in the country and have done so most of my adult life. Recently I read of a New Mexico artist who describes herself as a homebody and leads, as they said, "a simple, solitary life." I admire that.

I also loved being at home with my children. I value the life of the home: a long conversation by the fire; a walk in the neighborhood; sitting at the table after a satisfying meal; relaxing baths and bedtime routines; home-cooked food and honest relationships. I recently had the opportunity to be at home for a time and saw anew how rich the life of the home really is, how much we miss when we hurry through it to other things.

Life at home can easily take our full-time attention. Adding work, family, friends, and other social obligations, as well as ever-developing new interests, leaves us all feeling that we can never catch up. We believe we can do all of the things that we think of, and we never stop thinking of something new. From the vantage point of someone who likes driving in the slow lane these days, could it be that we are suffering from yet another addiction of our fast-paced society? Could it be that we're addicted to being busy? It feels like an addiction, doesn't it? There's that unsettled feeling when we're not busy-the social pressure to be busy, the painful transition to a slower life.

I remember that as a young mom with three children under five, I was going so fast that I couldn't slow down. Even when I had an opportunity to relax, I kept doing things. I was in overdrive. There's a rhythm and chemistry of overdrive that's seductive and exciting, that keeps us from feeling other things. And, with little ones, it can be a necessity. Here's a parody I wrote 15 years ago when I was a young mom to help me put my own busy life in perspective:

Busy and Efficiency
Busy and Efficiency have been in town again. You know, it's always fun to see those two at first. They give me a rush of excitement. But, boy, they sure do wear me out. I spend all of my time showing them around town, but they're always ready to see more. During their latest visit, we went to all of the museums, took in many pueblo dances, saw all of the movies and shows in town, and ate at most of the restaurants. And it's not even tourist season.

These two don't seem to care about sleep. I think the only time they slow down is when they're sick, and then only long enough to take something. Busy, for example, would rather use sleep to make plans for the next day, and she never has time to remember her dreams. She's planning before her eyes are even open.

Busy is beautiful, light, and bouncy, with long blond hair that flows around in a circle when she turns her head-which she does often, as she is always looking around. Efficiency looks like a cross between my seventh-grade grammar teacher, the spinster Miss Ellis, and Ichabod Crane. Her nose is long and pointed, she wears sensible suits, and she always carries a pencil perched behind her ear.

I would like it if Busy and Efficiency just had the social graces to know when they had overstayed their welcome. When they're here, they often interfere with my relationships with my other friends. For example, my friend Poetry has been wanting to get together so we can go over some of our latest work. But when Efficiency and Busy are in town, they expect me to give them my full attention, and of course I do. I haven't yet learned how to say no to them. They intoxicate me with their ideas. It always seems, at least at the time, that the latest idea they've come up with is more entrancing than the last, and that if I get involved with just this one more thing, the world will be saved. Meanwhile, my personal life is falling apart, and the other things I value are taking a back seat.

Well, I can't go on like this for long, now that I've recognized their subtle seduction. The question is how to stand up to them. I know when my boyfriend gets back from his trip, I will be able to put Busy and Efficiency on hold for a while, but this time I want to do it myself. This time I want to meet some new friends who can teach me how to balance the time I spend with Busy and Efficiency. I hear there are some new kids in town named Play, Relaxation, and Leisure. I'll ask someone who knows them to introduce us. I'll bet that my children know them.

There's a commonality to our conspiracy to be busy. We all expect one another to be busy and are suspicious of people who aren't part of the technological culture, who don't have an answering machine or who refuse to get e-mail. Like seeing the emperor's new clothes, as long as we are all too busy, it's acceptable.

We don't even let ourselves off the hook when we're sick. People routinely come to work sick, and if they do take time off, they take off just a day or so. Over-the-counter drugs and television ads suggest that we should just take something to get back to normal quick. Is illness only a nuisance with no value, our only task to banish all signs of it quickly and to forge on even when we're weak? We treat ourselves like machines.

So much has changed since I was a young mother. At that time we lived in an area where phone service was scarce, and we were part of an eight-party line. In the early days of the magazine, I wrote my editorials on an electric typewriter, and our only other machine was a copier. Years later we added a fax machine and, gradually, computers, e-mail, and of course voice mail. With so many communication devices, we are expected to be plugged in. Yes, perhaps we're more efficient, and we're certainly more busy, but we're also more pressured. In the days of the eight-party line, we didn't expect instant replies. Now we do.

That pressure to be "all that you can be" keeps us from simply being. While new magazines extol the virtues of the simple life, that generally only means buying different products, not changing one's lifestyle or consciousness. Living simply means doing both. Living in the slow lane means having the courage to measure the success of the day by a good meal or an intimate conversation. It means structuring your own day, leading with your own impulses. Living simply means coming home.

I have borrowed my idea of living in the slow lane from the international Slow Food movement, a movement started in Italy to protest McDonald's in the historic plazas. It has captured people's desire for a simpler life and has spread around the world. Since I've been living in the slow lane, I've noticed a change in my physiology. I am more in tune with my sensitivities. Things I handled routinely in the past actually upset me more than I realized. I notice that I often try to do too much in a day, then measure my success by whether or not I got "everything done." I can set an impossible standard for myself and, to keep up, must always remain on alert. Like most of us, I pedal faster but still don't get there. A friend whom I rarely see called recently and said, in response to the possibility of getting together, "I can't be extremely social. There's just too much to do. Treadmilling, you know..." I do know.

I wonder if we really want to live like this, and if not, how to find our way back. How can we unplug, not just from TV but also from a cultural ethic of constant stimulation and action?

This summer a researcher in neonatology told me that aggressive behavior in children could be traced to prenatal stress. The dramatic increase in premature births may also be related to stress. Are we passing on our stress to our babies? What does the pace of our society do to our physiology and to that of our children?

During my recent cocoon stage, I have been somewhat free from commercial messages and outside solicitations. Phone, mail, and e-mail are now mostly solicitations. Less input creates a certain peacefulness and allows for contemplation. What place does contemplation have in our world? Do we ever ask our children if they had time to contemplate today? How do we make sense of our own lives and improve our own behavior if we do not have an opportunity for contemplation and reflection?

The point of reflecting on the pace of society is not to push back the clock but to ask a very simple question. Who are we? Are we imperfect beings who must be controlled, manipulated, and improved through elective cesareans, cosmetic surgery, cloning, pharmaceutical drugs, and a host of things that others think we should have? Or are we instead perfect beings who can trust in the moment and the integrity of life as it is? I find it much more challenging to accept life as it is.

I look hard for the rightness in things as they are. I want to pull away the white space and make room for the simple things. And not just different products, but a different way of doing things-taking time to do things, doing fewer things but doing them well, leaving time for the unexpected, and not having to rush. Doing things this way is not a throwback to the past, it is a discipline. It is a discipline of deciding what comes first in our lives. When technology allows everyone, from friends to solicitors, to have equal access to our lives, then it is only we who can sort out who and what comes first. And in weighing and measuring, we must not forget the often unspoken but essential life of the home, a life that, without our attention, deteriorates and contributes to social chaos.

It's hard to change lanes, to put personal life first, knowing that others still plugged in will expect unrealistic things from us. Yet it is the unchecked activity in our lives and in our society that encourages excess. A principle of balance embodies giving to others as we give to ourselves. In a balanced life, there is contraction as well as expansion.

It's as if we're making room for negative space, for things to happen. When we're all full up and scheduled, the mystery doesn't happen the way it does so easily when we're traveling, for example, and taking things as they come.

The simple life has the possibility of adventure, of changing our minds, of surprise. In the slow lane, we will not miss the magic.

Peggy O’Mara is the mother of four grown children. She has gained international celebrity as publisher, editor and owner of Mothering Magazine. She is also the author of four books: Having a Baby Naturally: The Mothering Magazine Guide to Pregnancy and Childbirth, Natural Family Living: The Mothering Magazine Guide to Parenting, The Way Back Home: Essays on Life and Family, and A Quiet Place: Essays on Life and Family, all of which can be purchased in the Mothering Shop. A dynamic speaker, she has lectured and conducted workshops in conjunction with organizations such as the Omega Institute, Esalen, La Leche International, and Bioneers. She has appeared on numerous television and radio programs and has been featured in national publications including The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, The Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, Mother Earth News, and Utne Reader.

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