9:00:45AM
I started just on time, or maybe 45 seconds late.
I don’t know why I rush through these things in the morning. I hate to rush in the morning. I recall being a trainer on a project in Germany and my roommate would wake up earlier than I and would storm and stomp his way through the room right when he woke up. I would get so incredibly frustrated. It’s as if he started the day going full speed. What happened to the crescendo? It seems the day is supposed to start slow and then get faster and then slow down, almost mirroring the intensity of the sun. Soft in the beginning, intense, then soft as it fades behind the horizon.
Even in typing this quickly, I feel such an unwanted stress on my body. I wonder if quarantine has helped people realize how many of us wake up to rush off to work, going from sleep to high speed in mere seconds. Maybe people still rush because they have other things to do in the house and it’s a learned behavior, regardless of how far they have to go to work.
I’m trying to let myself slow down right now. To type at a pace that is more steady, a rhythm that is more aligned with how I want to feel in the morning. A few seconds ago I was typing super fast and could feel how it was causing most of my body to speed up and I was feeling a lot of stress.
At the same time, when I slow down, I want to go back to sleep. Maybe that’s why so many of us move fast in the morning—if we don’t, then we’ll realize how sleep deprived we are. This would happen in AIESEC conferences all the time. If I haven’t explained, AIESEC is a global organization focused on international youth leadership development. We’d often have conferences where people from many countries attended. I know most of us wouldn’t sleep enough at the conferences, maybe just a few hours per night, and often, first thing in the morning, there would be loud music blaring at a fast speed. It would get us up and moving around quickly, helping to prevent the desire to stay in bed.
So maybe that’s why I was moving fast. I was feeling tired and wanted to stay in bed, realized I had a deadline to type and was about to miss it. And if I typed slowly, was worried that I wouldn’t be able to stay focused on saying things—that my mind would drift, as it is right now, and my eyes would shut just a little more.
Yet, I feel so much more relaxed and comfortable with life. Oh how much pain we cause in life by making ourselves go more quickly or slowly than we want to go.
I’m going to slow down and appreciate this last sentence.
9:11AM
