by David Kundtz
Stopping, even in its shortest form, allows you to realize the essential meanings of your life and to consistently remember what is truly important to you so you can keep your priorities in order and up-to-date. It helps you know what you want to achieve and how you want to behave.
Stopping works where cramming and cutting don't, because it calls a time-out and gives you the freedom to reorganize the game of life according to your own rules; to recognize your true priorities. It creates an oasis where the turbulent waters caused by the demands of daily life can quiet and where, in the stillness, you can again see your own reflection. It gives you time to be, not just to do.
Stopping is born of personal experience and, like many useful ideas, came to me because I needed it so badly. In most cases, we don't stop until we feel overwhelmed and don't know where to turn. For some reason, when I got to the end of my rope, I just did nothing and waited, not out of any virtuous inclination, not because I thought the waiting would solve anything, but because I didn't know what else to do.
Now I can look back and see the value in that time of waiting: There were moments, short and long (but mostly short), in which I remembered some important information about myself, became more awake to my life, and became aware of all the aspects involved in the issue I was dealing with. Stopping helped me get going again, but going in a focused and determined way, rather than a scattered and chaotic one.
So this book is about Stopping, and specifically about Stopping when you feel you have to keep going. This kind of quieting and self-remembering is designed specifically to fit the needs of people who must live their lives at an ever-increasing speed and with an overwhelming number of demands upon them. And because that description fits many of us, chances are you are feeling overwhelmed and overloaded in your life and are looking for something—anything—to relieve the strain. If so, you've come to the right place. Stopping will help. And it's easy. You can do it anywhere at anytime.
The fast-paced rhythm of modern life conditionsus to skim the surface of experience,then quickly move on to something new.
STEPHAN RECHTSCHAFFEN
4
A Fast Train on the Fast Track
Stopping is not slowing down. There are many books on slowing down the frantic pace of life. This is not one of them, even though an important aspect of Stopping—even one of the reasons for Stopping—is, in fact, to slow down. The process of Stopping is very different from the process of slowing down. Trying to slow down does not slow you down. We have been trying to do that for many years now; it generally doesn't work. It's like trying to cut down on smoking: in a short time you end up where you started, except more frustrated.
Slowing down doesn't work because everything around us is going so fast. We get revved-up even if we don't want to be. In his book Timeshifting, Stephan Rechtschaffen, M.D., writes about entrainment, which he describes as an unconscious “process that governs how various rhythms fall into sync with one another.” For example, if you were to place two out-of-sync pendulum clocks next to one another, in a short time they would be exactly in sync. “The same principle works,” says Rechtschaffen, “with atomic particles, the tides and human beings.” With human beings? That's quite a remarkable idea. We pick up each other's rhythms and the accumulated rhythms of the world around us. If most of the rhythms around us are fast, so are ours, automatically. That's entrainment. The word can also mean “getting on a train.”
We have all boarded the train, the fast train on the fast track, and the process of entrainment is not under our conscious control. That's why trying to slow down doesn't slow us down. It's not because we're weak willed or quitters; it's because we're on a fast train where we're the passengers and not the engineers.
We are all riding on a very fast train that is traveling down a predetermined track, gathering speed as it goes, and we have been on it for a long time. We can't get to the engineer because the engineer is protected by loyal guards. Or perhaps there really is no engineer; the train is run by a computer. Many of us want to slow down; some want to get off the train. Others are so used to the speed that they don't notice it. A few love the speed and want to increase it. The few who love the speed are the only ones who get their way. Most of us stare blankly out the window, barely seeing the world flying by and feeling helpless.
Fortunately, there is something we can do about it. Stopping can get us off the train, can separate us from the speededup rhythms of those around us, and can bring us into rhythms of our own choosing, which, it's important to note, may well include some time on the fast train. Stopping can roll us into the roundhouse for refreshment and cooling off so we can make sure that, when we take off again, we're on the right track, going in the right direction, and have a very intimate working relationship with the engineer.
Entrainment helps to explain the amazingly short attention span of most of us these days. We get our information in sound bites: many brief, skeletal bones of facts. We just don't have time to read in depth or to linger over the newspaper. It seems also to have something to say about our fad-driven society. As soon as one idea, trend, fashion, or person becomes popular, it is quickly dropped for whatever next demands our attention. Whether it is valuable or vulgar seems to make no difference; it's just the next view out the window of the fast train. Faddriven culture engenders frenetic citizens who find themselves, unwittingly, screaming through the night on the fast train and trying to figure out, “How did I get here?”
Stopping can bring us both an answer and a solution.
It's good to have an end to journey toward;but it's the journey that matters, in the end.
URSULA K. LEGUIN
5
Stopping at the Speed of Light
Stopping is paradoxical. It would at first seem, would it not, that if one just stops, that is, does nothing, that it would be a waste of time? Indeed, a way to describe doing nothing is “wasting time.” And when you feel stressed and have too much to do, doing nothing may feel like the worst approach. But paradoxically, doing nothing turns out to be not only not a waste of time, but some of the most significant time you can spend, even if it is only for one minute.
This idea flies in the face of current belief and practice; “Do more and do it more quickly” is what we hear. But it is exactly this attitude that has made us overwhelmed. What we've been doing isn't working.
The kind of Stopping that I am suggesting is done while moving at the speed of light. Stopping while moving at the speed of light is a paradox: To stop on the one hand and to go at the speed of light on the other are contradictory statements that create so radical a paradox that they appear to be an oxymoron. In other words, it doesn't make sense—unless you see it paradoxically! Then it is transformed into an exquisite, inviting, alluring, and richly textured truth: Time spent doing nothing allows us to awaken what is most meaningful and valuable to us.
This soulful truth is actually based on a scientific paradox. The amazing fact is that objects moving at the speed of light no longer experience time. In other words, at the speed of light, time stands still. Scientists assure me that these are true and accurate statements. I don't pretend to understand them scientifically, but I like them. And I like to apply them to Stopping: Stopping is time standing still or standing still in time.
Stopping at the speed of light acknowledges that the Stopping takes place within the context of a very fast world that waits for no one and, if you can't keep up, will leave you behind. It also acknowledges something that many people who teach spirituality are resistant to accept: going fast is not necessarily bad. Many of the “technologies that promote speed are essentially good. The historical record is that human beings have never, ever opted for slowness,” says Jay Walljasper, an editor at The Utne Reader. “When I hear friends complain that their lives move too fast, they're not talking about a wholesale rejection of speed so much as a wish that they could spend more of their time involved in slow, contemplative activities.” The problem, of course, is that there
is way too much of one and not enough of the other. Stopping can restore the balance.
Many of us love the “revved-up beat of dance music, the fast-breaking action of basketball, or the speedy thrill of a roller coaster, but we don't want to live all our lives at that pace,” says Walljasper. “A balanced life with intervals of creative frenzy giving way to relaxed tranquillity—is what people crave.” Yes—and that's what Stopping is about.
The ultimate purpose of Stopping is going. But Stopping at the speed of light is not an unfulfilling, endless switching back and forth between going too fast and being dead still. Rather it brings its results—its gifts—to the person, not to the rate of speed. Its wonders are worked in the soul and thus are part of the person no matter what the speed of the moment.
Stopping ten times in a very hectic, emotionally demanding day doesn't feel like a jerky motion, but feels like a smooth flow moving in a balanced way through the day. The results are that you come to the end of the day not limp, exhausted, and depressed, but okay and, with appropriate rest, ready to continue with enthusiasm.
If families just let the culture happen to them,they end up fat, addicted, broke,with a house full of junk and no time.
MARY PIPHER
6
Intentional Living: from Routine to Choice
It used to be that people didn't need Stopping per se because the natural rhythms of life provided sufficient time for them to achieve a sense of balance between quiet work and active work. There were busy times and leisure times and they tended to balance one another. It was just the way life was.
This balance was probably the common experience of our grandparents or great-grandparents. The pace of life allowed for time in between events: the time walking to school, to a neighbor's, or to church; and the time of solitary work around the house, shop, or farm. Life on the land was hard, but there were long stretches of winter when people were homebound and the pace slowed to a crawl.
I can remember, as a boy, loving to drive out with my grandfather to his pig farm in rural northern Ohio. This was in the late ’40s. To me, my grandfather was bigger than life. He was serious but kindly, had an Irish twinkle in his eye, and always greeted me with, “Davit me bye!” My mother was reluctant to let me go with him because I would invariably come home a mess and late for dinner. My grandfather would spend hours checking on the pigs and talking to the farmer who ran the place. But what I did was truly magical. I wandered around the farm—probably never out of eyeshot, or at least earshot, of my grandfather— and explored everything: the barn; the old, rusted machinery; the pigs (I never got too close); and the fields. I was doing nothing but fussin' around, poking about, loafing, hangin' out, and kickin' back.
For most of us (isn't it sad to think of kids deprived of these aimless times?) such moments don't happen very often any more. They aren't built into the pace of life; we're just too busy. Picture these scenes in your mind's eye:
On a leafy street in a small town, suburb, or residential part of the city, a woman in her fifties, with graying hair, a calm look on her face, and wearing a simple house dress and apron, is seated in a rocking chair on her front porch on a warm summer afternoon. Her kids are somewhere in the house, in the yard, or off doing things. Her husband is working on the car in the back. From time to time she hears the laughter and shouts of the neighbors' kids playing in a yard nearby. She is shelling fresh peas for dinner. The work is so familiar that she does it methodically, automatically, and without having to think about it. She takes the peas from the colander, separates peas from pods with a practiced movement of her hand, and drums the fresh peas into a bowl. She rocks slowly. Some moments she thinks of the things that need to be done in her yard: The grass needs cutting, I'll have to remind Tommy and Those nasturtiums are taking over everything, I think I'll pull them up and plant some geraniums. Then she's a million miles away, remembering an event from her own childhood; My how I loved to do that, she says to no one and to anyone. The mailman interrupts this reverie and she chats with him a few moments, catching up with his rounds, his arthritis, and the neighbors' comings and goings. The mailman leaves and she sees that among the four pieces of mail is a letter from her sister in Denver. She puts that letter on top and places the little stack of mail on the porch railing. She glances at the letter and looks forward to opening it. She wonders if it has some news about their brother's health and, as she thinks of him, she offers a quick prayer. When she finishes her work and washes her hands, she'll enjoy taking a few moments to read the letter. This whole scene takes maybe twenty minutes or a half hour.
The banker is writing at his desk. His pen runs dry. He carefully blots the work that he has been doing and puts it aside. He reaches for his inkwell, unscrews the barrel of his pen, and dips it carefully into the inkwell. He engages the lever that will draw ink into the reservoir and pauses to allow the excess ink to spill back into the well. He then reaches into his drawer for a specially kept, small, soft, ink-stained piece of cloth and uses it to wipe the ink from the surface of his pen. He folds and replaces the cloth in the drawer, puts the two parts of the pen together, replaces the inkwell, and returns to his task. This whole scene takes maybe two or three minutes.
My point here is not to overvalue nostalgic tasks of days-gone-by, but to point out how far we've come from that leisurely pace and to call attention to what was going on in the minds and souls of these people as they lived these quiet moments of their lives.
As I wandered around my grandfather's farm, I was learning very important information, not only about my physical world—land, pigs and, tractors—but about who I was: “I'm with my grandfather today; he's my mother's father, he's from Ireland; he talks with a brogue, he loves horses and pigs; he has a delivery company. I think he likes to have me with him. . . .” Of course these are not the words or the awareness that would have occurred to a ten-year-old boy, but you can be sure I was learning these things, and much more, too.
The woman shelling peas has spent her time in a kind of contemplation. As she moved in her soul from her garden to her neighborhood to her childhood to her sister's letter, she too was learning important information about herself: who she is and what she wants. Even the mailman's interruption did not keep her from returning to her contemplation.
The banker refilling his dry pen sees a metaphor for himself as the busy executive: He is running dry, needing to dip into the well of soul, and he refills his reservoir of energy and patience.
These are all moments of Stopping. They are moments of remembering, awareness, and contemplation. My point is that these moments—these life-giving, urgently important moments that slow life down so that we don't miss the important parts—are rare for us now. The good and hopeful news is that we can—and I believe must—make intentional choices to make them happen for ourselves. Because life no longer offers such pauses naturally, we can intentionally create times with little to do and of quiet work. We can place the seemingly blank spaces, the spaces that help us to learn important things, between the events of life. Just as we have had to make specific choices to get sufficient physical exercise, so we now have to make choices to put spaces in our lives, spaces with nothing to do. Creating these spaces is the purpose of Stopping.
Parents can help create safe but unstructured time, time with nothing to do, but with adventuresome space to do it in, for their kids. You might not shell peas, but you probably wash dishes, cut vegetables, mow grass, fold laundry, and do other things. If you don't have a fountain pen to use as a metaphor for refilling your reservoir, you probably have a gas tank. The moments that naturally occur for us are probably not as quiet as they were in years gone by, nor as naturally conducive to contemplation, but that's not a problem. If we first are Stopped enough to notice them, we can change many of those moments from annoyances to life-enhancing opportunities.
Stopping ultimately has the same purpose of intentional living as American naturalist and poet Henry David Thoreau had in 1845 when he went to live at Wa
lden Pond: “I went to the woods because I wanted to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.” In the millennial era, most of us can't retire to the woods, so we have to create the Walden moments for ourselves.
Millions of persons long for immortalitywho do not know what to do withthemselves on a rainy afternoon.
SUSAN ERTZ
7
Stopping Before Everything
Stopping is a gentle art and is like an encouraging word that urges us to make the right decisions and choices: the ones we really want and the ones that are life-giving. These decisions are both the big, life-changing ones such as a career change, starting or ending a marriage, or moving to a new home, as well as the smaller, day-to-day ones such as, This purchase? That sales pitch at work? Tell her now or wait ’til later? In both senses of the phrase, Stopping comes before everything: Stopping should chronologically precede everything we do as well as assume a position of priority in our lives.
This is no small adjustment for most of us. This is a change in direction that will affect all the aspects of our lives. But I am not afraid that clearly stating the magnitude of the change will prompt you to say, “This is asking for too great a change. I don't think I want to get into this.” I am not afraid to tell the truth because the results are so promising: Not only will you find more moment-to-moment peace, but you will also find clarification of, even the discovery of, your life. Is there anything more important? And could there be anything much worse than knowing—when you are at the end of your life or even at the end of your day—that you missed it?
