Living by Slogans

I’m drawn to slogans and bromides that border on tired platitudes, but that also seem to me to be oftentimes elevated to the status of axioms or proverbs.  I mean the sort of wisdom you sometimes read on bumper stickers or dig out of fortune cookies.  Regardless of what they're called, being fond of them is not, I don’t think, something to be proud of.

Most of the ones I like I've borrowed from somewhere else and put into words that work for me, like “Enjoy the process,” which is a not-very-clever way to keep myself centered in the moment.  The slogan itself is pedestrian, of course, and the idea is threadbare, but its directness keeps me in the present, keeps me from getting ahead of myself and worrying about tomorrow’s problems today.  Never trouble trouble till trouble troubles you, as my father-in-law used to say. 

Reminding myself to enjoy the process is also how I get through parts of a day that are difficult to tolerate, let alone enjoy, like waiting on lines, visiting the dentist, going through airport security.  Or just talking to boring people.  Take the sweet with the sour, I say--it's all good.   

I often have to remind myself to “slow down,” mostly because my natural inclination is to speed through every-day activities—hurry to the bank, rush to the Wal-Mart, jog around the track, stop for gas, and so on and so on. It's a constant round of one errand or chore after another.

Slowing down and enjoying the process were both hard life changes for me, but in the end I discovered (surprisingly) that I liked the slower rhythms of life better than the speedier ones that caused me to race along every road and rush to the front of every line.  In fact, inviting someone in a hurry to go ahead of me in the supermarket line makes me feel good—calmer and more in control.  And it’s a good lesson for the person who eyes me narrowly as he or she edges by with a few groceries in hand. 

But saying “Haste makes waste,” doesn’t suit me—it’s one of the platitudes that I can’t warm to.  It amounts to just another invitation to slow down, after all, and I like the idea very much, but it suits me to say it differently, contradictorily:  “Slow is fast,” is the way I say it.  And slow is fast because slowing down usually keeps me from having to do the same job twice, once the wrong way, and then the right way.  Haste, you see, really does makes waste.

A few years back, everyone was talking about “multi-tasking,” but that sort of speed-up keeps me from enjoying anything I ever do.  I’d rather slow down and uni-task.  I want to be disciplined and deliberate, not fast.  Slow down and calm down, I say.  Keep your composure.  Don't worry, don't hurry.  That's the ticket.

The same idea applies to what passes for conversation these days.  Words fly around so fast that there isn’t room any more for even the shortest of thoughtful pauses.  I have to remind myself that I don’t have to say anything in response to sweaty, over-stated words when they’re hurled at me, words that are self-centered and self-congratulatory and aren’t really being spoken to me at all.  I do have the right, as they say on television cop shows, to remain silent.  And I do.

When I feel my life speeding up, however, as it wants to do when left to its own devices, I sometimes have to tell myself to “dial it down,” or “take it down a notch,” two hopeless but useful slogans for calming myself and simplifying my life.  John Wooden, the legendary basketball coach at UCLA, used to say, “Be quick, but don’t hurry.” 

Wooden had another slogan that I like enormously:  “Make every day a masterpiece,” he used to say.  That one’s so good, I can’t believe it came from a basketball coach, and not, say, from Leonardo DaVinci or Pablo Picasso.   Or maybe Dr. Phil. 

I think Wooden also said “there is no I in team,” but that one’s just annoying.