A Human Pace

Life is moving so slowly. I love it. Too cold and windy today? No problem- we’ll stay home and I’ll prop my feet by the woodstove and spend the day looking at kitchen designs on my laptop. Time feels different when there is plenty of it. There is a gentleness to the day, a way that things just unfold themselves in their own rhythm.

It’s been at least two years since we got the architectural software program, and hundreds, hundreds, maybe thousands of hours that Rebecca has sat up until the early morning hours in the blue glow of the computer screen. Night after night I would get up to pee at 2am and see her hunched over the keyboard, face inches from the screen, neck and shoulders locked in a creative trance. In the morning she would show me her latest brilliant design, to which I would either clap and approve or shoot it out of the sky with a roll of my eyes. And the next night she’d be back at it. There has been absolutely nothing efficient about our process. But it has taken this long for the house to show itself, for countless designs to gradually evolve into the next. The process of evolution has included bad ideas that dead-ended by 10am the next day, and grand ideas that grew into central features of the house. A string of small, unnoticeable shifts in a wall position or the height of the stair treads would be followed by a sudden lurch in progress, like the fish that one day decided to walk on land.

What has become obvious in this process is that each task has its own lifespan- a natural evolution of beginning, middle, and end, with a certain amount of time needed for each. And when we try to compress that lifespan in the name of efficiency, we deny ourselves the pleasure of not only being with things as they are, but of being with things at the pace that they naturally move. We compress ourselves, and we compress our joy in the project.

Where did we learn to set so many deadlines, to pack projects into predetermined boxes of time? In grade school, our tiny minds are shuttled onto the conveyor belt of progress. We are cultivated into productive workers from the time that we can hold a pencil. And then we graduate to dutifully type away at the keypad of this busy world, while the voice of dissent lies just under the surface. We dream of the freedom of time and vacation, and develop a quiet hatred for our To-Do lists. It’s completely crazy, and it is the water we swim in. But do we really need those deadlines? Isn’t there a natural human desire to learn, to create, to contribute? Is it possible that we could reach our goals, as individuals and as a culture, in a way that honors the natural rhythm of relationship between us and the mission?

Compared to the previous pace of our lives, this unfolding feels like a luxury. But I’m beginning to realize that for me, this friendlier relationship to time is a core element of happiness. I feel like we’re just hunkered down here in our little hideout of Eldorado Springs, laying low for a year while the culture of excessive productivity whistles overhead. I’m not making any money, and our entertainment budget consists of the $14.99 monthly Netflix fee. Going out to dinner is a rare luxury, and the thought of a little trip down to Mexico is about as far-fetched as going to the moon. But what we do have is the time to allow projects and creations to move through us, on their own time. We have the freedom of whole days to move with impulses, to follow the meandering thread of daily tasks, rather than trying to push that thread through the eye of a needle.

We’re still not done with our house design. My telephone wrestling matches with Larry P (his name rhymes with circle, and it’s such a nerdly little name that I can barely resist writing it, but I don’t want to tempt the googling gods of fate) at the county have defeated us to the point that we are shrinking the width of the house by a foot, so that the east wall can have normal windows and the dignity of an overhanging eave. Every inch counted when it was 25’ wide, and now its 24 feet. Which means that upon coming up the stairs from the entryway, you would bump straight into the corner of the kitchen counter. So now everything is changing- the kitchen and dining room are swapping places, the windows are shifting their size and position, and Rebecca is putting in late nights again to fiddle with the placement of counters and cabinets.

But it’s a better design. And we never would have gotten here if we had tried to squeeze this process into a time frame*. Yes, Christmas has come and gone, we still don’t have our building permit, and the front wall of the old house is still standing. But our blood pressures are low, we’re relaxed, and we’re learning how to move at a human pace.

*Counterpoint. Rebecca reminds me that if we DON’T start imposing a little more time discipline, in our old age we will be eating toast in a kitchen with no countertops.