It would seem that the warm weather of summer is an inducement to slow down and live life at a more leisurely pace. Summer time and the livin’ is easy-and it’s a good thing because if things didn’t slow down for at least a few months out of the year, many of us would just fall over dead from the incessant demands of life in the 21st century.
While walking through O’Hare airport several weeks ago I looked around and saw that practically everyone was talking on a cell phone. I remembered some 10-12 years ago, all those people would have had to find a pay phone if they wanted to call someone, or wait until they got home-and that was okay then, but now expectations have changed.
It’s ironic. Faster and more efficient technological devices promise to save us time—but everyone I know feels like they have less time.
Did ancient people also feel that time was a thief? No doubt.
But this perception is undeniably compounded by an increasingly frantic pace of life in modern times. When I was a teenager my mother put up a refrigerator magnet that said, “the hurrieder I go, the behinder I get”. It seems that this modern age nudges us to hurry up. But as many of us experience, the more we hurry up, the less time we seem to have.
The less time we seem to have, the more impatient we become. When we are impatient, the world around us becomes a source of frustration. If we are feeling impatient, we are feeling self absorbed.
Last Labor Day weekend, I found myself in the airport in Atlanta. We had just celebrated my grandson Henry’s first birthday. The plane was supposed to leave at 4:00 pm. Thunderstorms put O’Hare on a ground stop. But by 6:00 pm the status had passed. A voice came over the speaker saying we would leave by 7:00, 3 hours late but we all knew it could be worse. We boarded the plane, taxied to the tarmac and sat there 30 minutes, 60 minutes, 90 minutes. The man sitting next to me struck up a conversation saying he was worried that he wouldn’t get into Chicago until after midnight and he had to be on the job by 6:00 am. Finally, by 9:00 pm, (5 hours late) we took off. An hour into the flight the pilot announced there were more storms in Chicago and rather than burn fuel in a holding pattern we’d land in Indianapolis. There was no way we were going to get into Chicago until 2 or 3 in the morning. My seatmate exploded – he hit his seat and cursed.
Fidgeting impatiently, he broke into a sweat and loosened his tie. His mantra was-I can’t deal with this-I can’t deal with this…. He kept mumbling about how tired he was going to be. It was now midnight, and we were sitting in the Indianapolis airport awaiting permission to take off. Suddenly my seatmate burst out laughing. He said, “I might as well just accept it, I’m not going to get any sleep.” “I might as well accept it,” this became his new mantra. Earlier he had told me that he was staying in a Lakefront Hotel in the loop and he had a view of the lake, so I tried to cheer him up. I said, “It’ll be great. You are going to walk into your room and the sun will be coming up over Lake Michigan. It will be a beautiful sight.” By then he was laughing about how all of that angst was a waste of energy.
We have all been in situations when our expectations about what was supposed to happen didn’t pan out. We all know what it’s like to erupt in frustration when events turn against us. We all know what it’s like for our minds to scream at us that it shouldn’t be this way. When things go haywire or we are falling behind impatience invades the mind.
When my seatmate first realized how late we were going to be, his mind began to speed up with negative thoughts. He quickly thought of at least 10 horrible things that could happen.
In the book Take Your Time Ecknath Easwaran says that when our minds are in a hurry, our thoughts are usually negative. A mind in a hurry is not a healthy mind.
Many years ago I had a full blown manic episode. It landed me in the psychiatric intensive care unit. One thing about that experience I remember was how my mind speeded up. Fast thinking is characteristic of a manic episode.
I was thinking fast and thought I was so smart because of my fast thinking mind. But now I see that when my mind was thinking so fast I wasn’t being smart, or clever — my mind was in overdrive which meant that I was so taken with my thoughts that my speedy thoughts were all that mattered to me. To have a crazy mind like that is a weird sensation. The faster the mind the more you create your own version of reality.
But when the mind slows down, there is space and spaciousness—and space and spaciousness in us is what makes room for others and other thoughts. When the mind slows down we become patient—when the mind is quiet, panic dissolves. And when we are less in a panic, less in a hurry, we see that life is not all about me. Learning patience is the process of quieting the mind.
The Sufi mystic Meher Baba put it like this: “A mind that is fast is sick. A mind that is slow is sound. A mind that is still is divine.”
Slow down the mind.
There are two ways to learn patience by slowing down the mind. The first is to become aware of what our minds are doing.
Whether driving a car, biking or walking, if we are running late, we probably started late. If there is not enough time in the day then we are probably trying to fit too much into the available time. If we are feeling irritated with our kids, frustrated with a partner or spouse or annoyed with a relative or aging parent what we need is patience. And the way to get patience is to slow down the mind. The first thing I do to practice patience is to have a little chat with my own mind. It helps me to remember that I have a mind but I am not the mind.
The second thing I do is practice patience every day. I know of no better way to practice patience every day then to practice meditation.
The purpose of meditation is to train the mind to be quiet. By the silent mental repetition of a mantra, the mind becomes absorbed in one thing rather than everything. As long as the fluttering mind is in motion, it is creating a commotion for us. As long as the fluttering mind is in motion it is pushing us to think thoughts, chatter internally, make judgments, keep things moving. Meditation teaches the mind to be patient. The more we are patient, the less we suffer.
Just think about times when you have felt impatient. Think about those times you have felt restless, irritated, anxious and intolerant. To be impatient is to suffer.
The purpose of spirituality is to give us tools that will reduce our suffering. A basic spiritual truth is that the more self absorbed I am, the more I will suffer, and the more I suffer, the more suffering I cause others.
His Holiness, the Dalai Lama once said, “The moment you think only of yourself, the focus of your whole reality narrows, and because of this narrow focus, uncomfortable things can appear huge and bring you fear and discomfort and a sense of feeling overwhelmed by misery. But the moment you think of others with a sense of caring, however, your view widens. Within that wider perspective, your own problems appear to be of little significance, and this makes a big difference.”
We practice patience because it not only reduces our suffering but it also reduces the suffering of those around us.
As I practice slowing down my mind, I learn to settle down, and when I learn to settle down I develop the capacity for compassion and love. Compassion and love are two sides of the same coin. Compassion is the wish for other beings to be free from suffering. Love wants other beings to have happiness.
Compassion and love grow naturally out of the mind that is spacious and slow. This is why practicing patience is the ground out of which compassion and love take root in our lives. And this is why lately, I’ve been repeating the mantra: practice patience – don’t hurry, be happy.
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