IVP - Strangely Dim - Pace and Peace

Pace and Peace

I wrote the following three years ago. The details have changed, but the story remains the same. Consider this "Escape from Urgency" in our Summer of Escapist Fantasy.

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I just walked into a wall. It wasn't like I had my head in a comic book or was testing to see if I had sonar or anything; I just walked into a wall. My head was somewhere else.

This weekend my eighteen-month old nephew ran into a wall. He was so excited running down the hallway that he turned too early. It was cute because he's so little, and he's cute when he runs, and he got over it quickly. But I'm not little, I wasn't running, and I'm clearly not over it. Not cute.

I've noticed lately that when I get stressed, I start to check out. I don't listen as well when people talk to me, I don't notice how people are feeling when I see them or talk to them. And lately it seems like I can't stop running, like I'm facing wave upon wave of hyperactivity--family visits here, road trips there, writing projects there, special events here. I'm coping by checking out, which is clearly not coping at all, if it means that I'm stepping on toes and walking into walls. . . .

It strikes me that a person is much less likely to slam into a wall while walking than while running. At the very least, it's easier to stop, but walkers are also more likely to be aware of their surroundings--unless, of course, their minds are racing and their heads are somewhere else.

I came across this passage from Henry David Thoreau's Walden, which I think offers a pretty astute analysis of the crisis of pace: We think we have to know everything, even though we cannot, and so we strive continually and thereby gradually and unrelentingly run ourselves down.

Most men, even in this comparatively free country, through mere ignorance and mistake, are so occupied with the factitious cares and superfluously coarse labors of life that its finer fruits cannot be plucked by them. Their fingers, from excessive toil, are too clumsy and tremble too much for that. Actually, the laboring man has not leisure for a true integrity day by day; he cannot afford to sustain the manliest relations to men; his labor would be depreciated in the market. He has no time to be anything but a machine. How can he remember well his ignorance -- which his growth requires -- who has so often to use his knowledge?

So I'm going to try to run less and walk more. As soon as I can pry my head out of this wall.

Posted by Dave Zimmerman at August 12, 2009 8:27 AM