Hurry Up and Slow Down!

I love innovation.  I love to have the world at my fingertips on my smart phone and connect to anyone, anywhere, and at any time.  I’m grateful at the ease that as a mom I don’t have to go to the library every time my son asks me a question that I don’t know the answer to, and then we can look up the answer together on-line.  I love that I can shop at on-line retailers, which gives me more quality time doing what I love to do. It’s fast.  It’s easy.  It’s convenient.  Our world is thriving through innovation in health care, information technology, and entrepreneurships are paving the way to make eases in our life from the foods we eat, to the clothes we wear and the words we read.

Everything around us is speeding up.   Our kids seem to be growing up at faster, technology is constantly changing, and just when I thought I knew the most efficient way to make use of my time, there’s another method roaming cyberspace telling me a quicker way into finding time and slowing down.   Technology is even helping us hurry up and slow down at the same time!  Evolution is a wonderful thing.  It’s how I’m sitting here writing to you on my laptop and you get to read it through your social medium of choice.

Yet, there’s a balance to innovation and evolution.   If we get off balance, we pay a high price and that high price is usually an internal price.  Somehow we’ve adopted a sense of self-worth the higher, faster, later, bigger we get, work, and do almost anything.  We tend to feel a sense of guilt for slowing down and if we do, we want to hurry up and slow down.  The nature of our world today makes implementing meditative practice at home very important.   Meditation is a life saver.  It helps us slow down, tune in, and dance in the river of life.

I wonder where this slowing down and feeling of guilt stems from.  Does it really mean I’m worth more to my family, friends, and the world if I’m so busy that I’m making myself sick with stress?  Let’s keep busy innovating, growing, and making beautiful things and connections in this world, but let’s find the balance that keeps our internal mapping system strong, reliable, and healthy.

We can’t hurry up and slow down.  That’s a wrestling match.  We must dance into our slowness. Sometimes all this takes is you, your breath, your intention, your space and a few minutes.   Your space can be anywhere and at any time.  The power behind our space lies in our intention in that space.  Breathe in the beauty around you for 3 breaths, then breathe out the beauty within to give back and nourish for 5 breaths.  Do this for a few minutes and set your intention to carry you through the moment, hour, or day.

When we meditate, breathe mindfully, or say a prayer we tune into the divine within and all around. Deepak Chopra said this simply “A prayer is a request from a small part of god to a large part of god.”  The answer to the right amount of balance in our lives is different each day, but balance in high speed innovation and a healthy mental life always has the ingredient of slowing down, which gives us the gift of divine connection.  Go ahead and joy a little.

Om Shanti Om ~ Athea

Athea