A Healing Pace of Life

Jesus never seemed to be in much of a hurry, but he did not pas­sively drift through the world either. He had a pace that was always amaz­ingly appro­pri­ate. Even when he would dis­miss unruly crowds, he would qui­etly dis­ap­pear into the moun­tains to pray and be alone. When he was about to be stoned (on sev­eral occa­sions), he main­tained such a com­po­sure that he sim­ply van­ished into the crowd itself. All too often, he had to sim­ply walk away from mobs and their scape­goat­ing dynam­ics. Hys­te­ria was never one of his traits.
Hur­ry­ing is one of the most waste­ful things we do. It is exhaust­ing. It increases our chances of mak­ing mis­takes — even fatal ones. Feel­ing pressed for time is one of the most dan­ger­ous emo­tions for peo­ple with heart con­di­tions. For oth­ers, it cre­ates an edgi­ness that makes them dif­fi­cult. Worse yet, the feel­ing of hur­ried­ness is con­ta­gious.
Doing sev­eral things at once is actu­ally a way of doing noth­ing much but flit­ting from one start­ing point to another. Multi-tasking is pos­si­ble, if you do not mind shav­ing a few years off of your life — and mak­ing a ner­vous wreck of every­one around you. Though it is often admired as some sort of super-person trait, it is actu­ally very inef­fec­tive and soul-draining.
I use many tac­tics to main­tain an inter­est­ing but rel­a­tively calm pace: I cre­atively pro­cras­ti­nate; I make absolutely full use of my trash cans (decide, toss, for­get); I am not a per­fec­tion­ist; I develop sys­tems of accom­plish­ment; Most of all, I do not rein­vent the human wheel (in other words, I do not bog down in some need to be ultra-unique).
Humor is a good way to pace your­self. If you are in a state of rush or pas­siv­ity that cuts into your humor, you are off track. The best mea­sure is to pay atten­tion to the way you breathe. If you are per­pet­u­ally in the shal­low breath­ing of the top of your lungs, your life has become some sort of exhaust­ing drama. Live at the speed of nor­mal breath­ing and see if you do not feel bet­ter and actu­ally accom­plish more in the long run.