Grandma's Advice


Going through some notebooks, I came across an outline for a paper I wrote back in high school. I had interviewed my grandma about what it was like when she was my age. Some of the questions were pretty basic. What did you do for fun? How would you describe your high school self? What was high school like back then? But one question made me pause.
What advice do you have for my generation?


Unfortunately, I did not take the most complete of notes. However, the little I did record struck me. In all caps, I wrote "SLOW DOWN." Being a generally busy person, it made me sigh. I don't know about you, but I have a hard time slowing down. Unless I go on a retreat, I don't know how to hit pause. When I do have breaks, I don't know how to use them. My list of books to read, places to go, and creative projects to do only seem to increase. During the school year, I am constantly on the move. While I used to sit and journal at least monthly, now I do so maybe once a semester.

The result has been a feeling of disconnectedness. That I keep missing something that I had once known when I did find rest. But I cannot place what it is. All I can feel is the pull to rest and take the time to search my heart and find it. But I always seem to find a reason why I can't. Work to do. Dishes to clean. Food to make. Emails and messages that need to be sent. Small projects to complete. The list can continue for as long as I want. And when I do have free time, I don't take it to pause and reflect or do those restful things. Instead, I fill my head with Netflix, Facebook, or games on my phone. This is not rest. This is numbing.

Numbing comes fast. You don't really need to be in the mood for binge-watching TV shows or scrolling endlessly through your phone. It just needs to be opened and then you're there. We detach from our own lives to enter the fantasy-world of television, drop in on the tiny snippets of other people's lives, or to simply zone out with a repetitive game. It's easier than asking yourself questions that you may or may not have the answers to. Not necessarily because you're unwilling to, but because it takes more energy. It takes a calming of the mind to be honest with yourself, and that level of decompression takes time to reach. And it requires setting down that phone that seems to always be within reach.

Some days, the numbing option is easier to turn down than others. Some days, I can say that I have taken some time to slow down a tad. I do spend time talking with my roommate(s) about life - daily activities, reflections on personalities, ideal scenarios to world and personal events. I do allow myself to stop reading a chapter if a passage stands out to me, and try to find out why. But I do not often seek out moments like these. Not like I did before college.

The weeks seem to go by a little faster each year. My summer, my senior year, my time abroad, my whole undergrad - it all flew by. And each year I spent a little less time intentionally taking everything in. Beginnings and endings seem to be the only spots where I try to take things slow. Both times being moments of calibration. One an adjustment to a new chapter of life. The other a time to look back and tie a bow on an experience. The trick is learning how to do this in the middle, too. To pay attention to life unfolding and how my story is being written instead of experiencing it as utter chaos or monotony.  It has been done before. Now is the time to learn to do it again.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Who Do I Think I Am?

Image
These past couple of weeks, I've been reflecting on the questions I asked in my last blog post.   And this week, my questions to answer were "What do I treat as my primary identity?  Why?  How does it manifest?"  I knew this series would take a lot of introspection to answer.  Thankfully, an activity in one of my classes jump-started the process for me. As a "get to know you" exercise, all of us in my Translational Evidence and Theory for Practice class were asked to draw and share a pie chart of who we are.  I'm a pretty visual person, so I liked the concept of the exercise; however, it had a flaw.  It doesn't take having a math degree to know that all the "slices" of the pie chart have to add up to 100% and that there cannot be overlap between said slices.  If you give Jack and Diane two slices of pie, you don't tell Diane that some of Jack's pie is also hers and Jack that some of Diane's pie is also his.  They will give you w
Read more

What Am I Supporting?

Image
Sometimes, you hear people say they won't support a certain store because it backs an organization or promotes an image they do not agree with. Or maybe someone tries to only buy local products, or at least things that are American made. Another thing people might be conscientious about is buying clothing that doesn't come from sweatshops. All of the people who are doing these things at one point or another asked themselves this question: "What am I supporting by choosing to consume this product?"     Over the course of my college career, I've found myself asking that question in various ways. After all, that's where the question was first posed to me at a time that I felt I had the ability to act on it. While the question of support sounds pretty self-explanatory, I want to spell out what I mean by it. What we buy things from, we fund and thus contribute to their ability to stay in operation. Give them enough support, and they get the message that they'
Read more

Work v. Play

Image
If you grew up in a Jewish or Christian household, you've heard the phrase "keep holy the sabbath" before. For both religions, a big part of this is to not do work on one day of the weekend.  For Jews, this is Saturday; for Christians, this is Sunday (the Lord's Day). For the sake of keeping things easily readable and as accurate as I can write them, I'm going to continue this post from the Christian tradition.   Side note: if the difference in days piques your interest, check out this passage of a book that chronicles the history of the Christian Sunday (and partially inspired this post) or this article . From the outset, this command seems pretty simple. Don't clock in to your job on a Sunday, or if you're a student, don't do your homework on a Sunday. Of course, there are some exceptions like nurses, firemen, police officers, etc. But, for most of us, we aren't exempt from the "no work" command. I know there might not seem to be muc
Read more