Good Things Take Time

But what does that really mean?

If our bodies are antennas, what does an injury do to our ability to receive and perceive signals from the material and social worlds?

Today I took a walk and wrestled with this question. My knee was wrapped in a new neoprene brace. My body felt stiff and brittle like bread left out on the counter. My mind felt anxious like a dog in a hot car whose owner has been in the store for a little too long.

I’ve been feeling overwhelmed lately. It’s certainly a product of my own doing; of doing too much. I’ve been trying to step back and slow down. But that’s such a hard thing to do in a world that feels like it’s constantly accelerating.

Maybe it’s just me. Maybe a few wires got crossed when they were building my brain. Maybe I should be on meds. Maybe I should think less. Maybe I’m not thinking enough. Maybe I’m thinking about the wrong things. Maybe I’m thinking about the right things. Maybe I may be unwell.

There’s just so much noise, so much of the time. It’s disorienting and confusing and fighting it is exhausting but fleeing from it feels futile.

Nevertheless, I gotta try.

So, last weekend I went up the canyon to ski. It was a hang-your-tongue-out-of-your-mouth and taste the snowflakes kinda day. The first real storm in weeks. So, I skied hard. I hucked some small rocks, then some bigger ones, and finally decided it was time to do something scary.

I skied down to a proper dropper under the chairlift. Some kids up above yelled “send it,” so I pointed and prayed, gripped it and ripped it, tried to do once more what I’d been practicing doing for the last few years. I felt confident in where I’d land and how my body would respond. I’d visualized the runout. I’d imagined the turns I’d have to make. But fate had other plans.

I don’t remember how it happened, but I remember a pop, followed by heat and pain in my right knee. “Nice job,” the kids yelled over their shoulder from the chair, continuing its progress uphill. “Keep trying, you’ll get it. At least your skis didn’t pop off.”

It’s crazy how much can happen in a week. I have been humbled by time so many times. Whenever I think I’ve got a sense of how things work, it confuses the shit out of me. Whenever I think I’ve got a clear heading, it shuffles everything around. Whenever I think I’m tuned into a signal, time takes that transmission and scrambles it.

This all makes me think that perhaps our culture has profoundly misunderstood time.

Regardless, in this moment I’m walking on a hill. I’m surrounded by sagebrush and grasses I do not yet know the names of, cautiously picking my way through uneven terrain. My antenna is bent; my leg wrapped on the middle like a piece of tape trying to hold a broken pair of glasses together. I contemplate what this all means. I roam and search for a signal.

No bars. Just fear, anxiety, sadness, grief, guilt, and doubt.

But then I find something. Not in spite of my damaged appendage—because of it. I pay even closer attention, and suddenly I start to feel every little contour in the dirt and stone. I become hyper-aware of each microscopic gradient and the ways they strain my knee. I’ve run this trail dozens of times. I’ve never noticed any of this.

Using the soles of my feet like hands, grabbing the ground with my toes, I become attuned to so many details that I’d only ever consolidated into the dense concept of “earth.” Now, with my knee bent into a new shape, I’m becoming aware of another world.

I feel the heat stored in the soil. I see how roots and water and humans are constantly redesigning this landscape. I hear how only some rocks choose to speak as I walk across them, and no two say the same thing. It’s like realizing that your television has been set to black-and-white all along.

And then it hits me. Maybe the only way to get me to slow down was to make me. Perhaps my antenna hadn’t been broken, but bent into place. Albeit a bit forcefully. But I can’t blame the mountain for that. I didn’t give it much of a choice.

When I was in college, I flew to Tanzania and climbed Mt. Kilimanjaro with a group of local porters. These remarkable men walk up and down the mountain nearly nonstop. They amass hundreds of trips to and from the summit of Africa’s highest peak with humility and humor. Getting to walk alongside them for five days was by far the best part of the adventure. One porter in particular, Suleman, became a lifelong inspiration.

Early on the first day, when I was trying to get him to pick up the pace, he snapped back “pole, pole!” I asked what that meant, and he explained that the closest English translation is “slow, slow.” I remember him chuckling when I asked that, perhaps because in my desire to immediately know its meaning I was proving the need for such a phrase.

It struck me then, and it strikes me now, that we don’t have a way to cordially remind one another to slow down in English. “Slow, slow” wouldn’t make sense, and “slow down” sounds too demanding. So, what do we say instead?

More often than not, it seems like we validate or enable, replying “that sucks” or “you’ll get through it if you just keep going.” Neither seems all that harmful, but what’s the cost of neglecting to call stop? What do we lose when we no longer have a way to remind each other to slow down? To suggest with kindness that maybe the answer is taking longer and doing less in order to ultimately do more?

I think that’s a big cause of this cloud of interference I’ve felt caught up in. I’ve fallen out of tune with what really matters. Relationships. Movement. Beauty. Curiosity. Wonder.

Happiness has never been complicated. Anyone that suggests as much isn’t offering the gift of joy, they’re selling emotional treadmills. And I’ve been implicitly subscribing to that existential exercise program, working my heart-mind-body past the point of exhaustion; past the breaking point. In service of what?

It turns out there’s a big difference between knowing what something means and knowing what something means. I’ve been repeating “pole, pole” for over a decade now, but I think this week is the first time I fully understood the purpose of this utterance. Where the hell are we going? What are we running to or from? How much further until we get there? Is this really the right way?

I’ve got more to say, but I don’t think those thoughts are ready to settle out of the turbulent mess that is my mind right now. Maybe they will. Maybe they won’t. Either way, it’s gonna take time.

For Taylor, Chris, and Stephen