On Slowing Down, Changing Worlds, and Seasons (Blog #1092)

In an interview I listened to yesterday, former head hostage negotiator for the FBI Chris Voss said, “You have to go slow to go fast.” Meaning that in high-stakes or even low-stakes negotiations it pays to pump the brakes, really listen to the other party (rather than simply trying to cram your viewpoint down their throat), and communicate clearly. In dancing we say it like this: take time to do the prep, the setup. Don’t get ahead of the beat. Once I told a couple who was working on a routine for their wedding, “You’re already going too fast now, and I can promise you that you’ll go even faster on your wedding day (because of adrenaline) if you’re not careful.” Well, I was at the wedding, and sure enough they were at least eight eight-counts (sixty-four beats) ahead of the music.

Which means they finished before the song did.

Ugh. Pumping the brakes is such a challenging thing. We live in a fast-food society, and we want what we want when we want it (now). The internet and Amazon Prime haven’t helped things, since they’ve made both information and everything under the sun almost immediately available. Consequently, our natural tendency toward impatience has been encouraged. Perhaps this in one of the silver linings to our current situation with respect to COVID-19. We’re being forced to stay in, slow down (even the internet is dragging because so many people are on it), and wait. For a solution. For our jobs. For toilet paper.

As I’ve thought about the phrase “go slow to go fast” today, I’ve related it to this blog and my personal journey, one of my consistent themes being “slow down, be patient.” Not that I’ve WANTED to slow down, but it’s simply been the only way. To learn all the things I have in therapy, to learn all the things I have through this blog. Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “The years teach much the days never know.” Amen. This is the way of it. You can’t hurry love, you can’t rush the seasons, and you can’t speed up your own personal transformation. Not that you don’t have any say in how long it will take, since God knows you could drag your feet about it or refuse to do your part, but even when you’re doing everything you know to do, metamorphosis is not going to happen overnight.

Alas, slowing down seems to be the best way to “get there.” This is a message of myofascial release too. It’s not push hard and fast, it’s push gently (sink) and slow. It’s wait for at least five minutes. I know, I know. Who has five minutes? But the good news is that if you do go easy and you do wait, restrictions that have been rock hard for years can melt like butter. This is the “go fast” part. Meaning the best way to get quick, lasting results is to slow the hell down.

It’s counterintuitive, I know. But look at nature. The way a tree grows. The way a baby grows. Life doesn’t get in a hurry. And yet we do. Despite the fact that we ARE life. Three years ago I started this writing project wanting to get somewhere. Recognized or whatever. And boy was I in a mental hurry. But having spent every day since slowly but surely putting down hundreds of thousands of words, thoughts, and ideas and having been changed by the process for the better, I’m convinced “steady as she goes” is the only way. What’s more, now that I’m quickly approaching the end, there’s part of me that wishes I hadn’t been in such a rush in the beginning. That I’d savored The Changing more.

Tonight I started working my way through a free online class about storytelling presented by Khan Academy and the creative team at Pixar. It’s magical. Anyway, one thing the Pixar people talk about is the difference between a character’s wants and needs, two things that are often (and probably should be) at odds with each other. For example, in The Wizard of Oz, Dorothy WANTS to get back home to Kansas. But what Dorothy NEEDS is to get in touch with her brains, heart, and courage. In other words, Dorothy doesn’t need to get back home to Kansas, she NEEDS to get back home to herself.

And who doesn’t really?

Thinking about the wants and needs in my life, I know that a few years ago I WANTED to move to Texas and start my career as a writer. Alas, the gods had other plans, since what I NEEDED was to first unlock the talents, sensitivities, and powers inside of me that back then lay dormant. In terms of storytelling, what I’ve undergone the last several years would be called “a character arc,” meaning that THROUGH CONFLICT and by OVERCOMING OBSTACLES, I’ve transformed into a better version of myself. Unfortunately, both in storytelling and in life, it appears conflict and obstacles are NECESSARY COMPONENTS for getting us not where we WANT to be, but where we NEED to be.

This sucks, I know.

Naturally, we WANT this transformation to happen quickly. More often than not, we NEED it to happen slowly. (Why, Marcus?) Because every time you change something about yourself (a thought, a belief, a boundary, a perception), you quite literally change the world you’re living in. Not that you leave earth and end up on a different planet, but in effect you do. Because every time you change you end up playing by a different set rules, and that means your interactions, strategies, and results change. So you might as well be living on Mars. Or in Oz. All this to say that world-changing is jarring, so you need time to adjust and get the lay of the land. Okay, I’m single now. All right, I’m not putting up with that crap anymore. Shit, I’m quarantined.

More and more my message to myself and others is, Sweetheart, be patient. Yes, there are mysteries inside you that desperately want to come out. But mysteries are never called out in a flash or forced out through screaming. (Hurry up and heal!) Rather, mysteries are coaxed out by being snuggled up to, by being deeply heard. Sweetheart, what do you have to reveal to me? I’m listening. And do please take your time. This is why we have time. Not so that we can get an answer to our problems lickety split, but so that we can be grown by both our trials and our triumphs, the way a tree is grown by life’s ever-changing seasons.

Quotes from CoCo (Marcus)

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Ultimately, we all have to get our validation from inside, not outside, ourselves.

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Together (Blog #917)

Whenever I’m sick with a sinus infection, like I have been this week, I judge how sick I am by the color of the junk I cough up when I first get out of bed. It’s gross I know. (Don’t worry, I won’t get too descriptive.) But take yesterday for example, I hacked up this stuff that was dark and bloody. I thought, Oh yeah, I’m sick. But this morning I hacked up this stuff that was like, light yellow. So I thought, Okay, all right. Go team. This is progress. We’re on the mend.

As has been the case for the last year and a half, I credit my sinus improvements to probiotics. Not the kind you swallow, but the kind you either swish around in your mouth or sniff up your nose. I get it, it’s weird. But the idea is that sinus infections are caused by “bad” bacteria (I put bad in quotes because I’m sure the bacteria’s mothers don’t think of them as bad), and the probiotics contain “good” bacteria that crawl around in your sinuses, find those critters that are causing your nasty infection (I imagine they have to use teeny-tiny flashlights), and eat them for breakfast (with little forks). It’s sad to think about, I know. All those grieving bacteria mothers. But hey–circle of life and all that.

Assuming the probiotics I bought and started yesterday are the reason for my less colorful mucus, I’ve continued using them today. And whereas my health hasn’t miraculously turned around, I have felt better, more energetic. I’ve been coughing less. This morning I took it easy (I watched a documentary about Pixar, the computer-animated film company, on Netflix), but this afternoon I rallied and did some odd job work for a friend of mine–hauling trash to the dump(ster) and taking donation items to Savers. This evening I got out to teach a dance lesson, but when they canceled at the last minute I ran some personal errands instead. Returned non-used items to Lowe’s and Walmart, that sort of thing.

At one point in time I really flipped shit whenever a dance lesson canceled. Not because I didn’t understand that things come up, but because I get paid by the hour. In a very real sense, I count on that money. Still, these last several years have taught me that things always work out and something else always comes along. So rather than launching into my worry-wart routine this evening when my lesson canceled, I shrugged my shoulders and thought, Whatever. What-the-hell-ever. Now I can run those errands. And whereas running my errands wasn’t as lucrative as teaching a lesson would have been, it was perhaps just as fun.

I’ll explain.

Immediately upon leaving my teaching space, I saw three deer. No kidding. They’d just crossed the street and actually turned around to look at me. Stopping my car, I pulled out my camera. At this point the deer ran off. But then I looked out my other window and saw another deer, and this one let me take its picture. (How polite.) Talk about a magical moment. For this brief instant I wan’t thinking about sinus infections, lost wages, or anything stressful. I was just right there, right then. We were there together.

After my moment with the deer, I went to Lowe’s. There I told the ladies at the customer service desk that I’d like to return an item (a package of nuts and bolts). Well, one of the ladies said, “Oh, I’m sorry, it’s No-Returns Thursday.”

“Oh, no,” I laughed. “Not No-Returns Thursday!”

Then the other lady said, “Don’t worry. We’ll make an exception for you because you have great hair.”

Phew, I thought, my great hair saves the day again.

(For the record, my hair has never saved the day before today.)

I can’t tell you how much this interaction thrilled me. Earlier today I stopped by the bank to reorder checks (which I also did last week, but the checks came back with a spelling error on them–the orderer typed NPRTH instead of NORTH), and whereas the teller was pleasant and helpful, she wasn’t playful. Maybe that wouldn’t be appropriate at a bank, but my point is that we often take ourselves and what we’re doing so seriously that we miss the living, breathing people standing in front of us. We forget that we can make of any moment what we want to. We forget that regardless of our life circumstances we can have fun.

We can be right here, right now together.

Quotes from CoCo (Marcus)

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There's a wisdom underneath everything that moves us and even the planets at its own infallible pace. We forget that we too are like the planets, part of a larger universe that is always proceeding one step at time, never in the wrong place, everything always right where it belongs.

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