Slow Motion: Addicted to Speed

In a recent post I began to explore the idea of "Learning to Pause." Yesterday's during the message, we began to develop this idea a little further and the implications that it has on our daily lives. Because our culture is so marinated in speed, it can be extremely challenging to begin to establish new patterns of slowness into our daily rhythms of living. I suspect it will take more than a message to dislodge most of us, so this week, I'd like to continue the conversation of Speed and our need to begin incorporating elements of living in Slow Motion.


We'll start by looking at the symptoms of what Lewis Grant calls "Sunset Fatigue." Consider the following questions/symptoms:

• You find yourself rushing even when there’s no reason to;

• There is an underlying tension that causes sharp words or sibling quarrels;

• You set up mock races (“OK, kids, let’s see who can take a bath fastest”) that are really
about your own need to get through it;

• You sense a loss of gratitude and wonder;

• You indulge in self-destructive escapes from fatigue: abusing alcohol, watching too much
TV, listening to country western music [okay, the last one is mine, not Grant’s].

• When a person is talking slowly, do you ever find yourself wanting to (or actually)
finishing their sentences?

• Do you nod a lot when a person is talking slowly in an effort to keep them moving along?

• When you stop at a red light with two or more lanes with cars in them, do you ever try to
anticipate which car looks faster so you can get behind that car and save a few seconds
when the light turns green?

• Do you ever try to gauge which line at the grocery store will be the quickest and get in
that line? And, if it turns out you picked the slower line, does it bother you?

Sunset Fatigue is "When we come home at the end of a day’s work, those who need our love the most, those to whom we are most committed, end up getting the leftovers. Sunset fatigue is when we are just too tired, or too drained, or too preoccupied, to love the people to whom we have made the deepest promises.” (Lewis Grant, quoted in Dolores Curren, Traits of a healthy Family and The Life You’ve Always Wanted by John Ortberg.)