Friday, September 18, 2009

The speed of being


By TONY EVANS
Express Staff Writer

I recently learned that if a snail is lifted from its slippery trail and quickly placed down nearby it will have the perception, due to the pace of its nervous system, that it has disappeared and then reappeared someplace else. I thought of this Sunday morning while watching the slow-motion fireworks of the flowerpots. Insects buzzed by, perhaps born that very morning, and already facing a midlife crisis. Our cat, Quantum, had just slept for 16 hours and was still taking his good, sweet time getting up.

Why are we humans meant to be in such a hurry? What is our natural pace for taking in the world? I started to write a poem on Sunday: My woman's back is the shape of an hourglass. I lay her down to stop the time ... but I soon realized I had chores to do, things to accomplish in the material world. I remember when summers used to last forever. Now they flash by in a series of deadlines and half-remembered weekends.

This weekend we will watch movies from around he world at the Sun Valley Spiritual Film Festival. Our eyes will perceive a continuous flow of images at about 30 frames per second. Any slower and the individual frames become visible, breaking up the flow of continuous images used to tell a story. Any faster and we will lose the plot. We are snails in our own way.

I like going to the movies because everything is in order. By contrast, my own life seems to suffer from poor direction, bad lighting and an unfinished script. Unlike the snail and the cat, I am not always sure what to pay attention to, and this causes me to scurry around, afraid I will miss something important.

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Maybe the solution is to get out of time altogether.

In Aldous Huxley's "The Perennial Philosophy," an anthology of the world's spiritual traditions, the author expands on a common theme found in all religions—a belief in the notion of eternity. It takes many forms, but it is always there, passed down from generation to generation, this notion of timelessness, providing a foundation for the common spirituality of humanity.

It works for me when I think of it. When I act as though I have all the time in the world, good things can happen. Interesting ideas and people can emerge from the chaos of my life. When I reflect on the events of my life, the plot comes together.

Avoiding haste is what enabled Albert Einstein to discover the relativity of time, ushering in a new era of physics. "It's not that I am smarter than everyone else," said Einstein. "I just spend more time on a problem than the rest."

Maybe slowing down will help me finish my poem, but I have a feeling it will only come in its own sweet time, like Quantum emerging from a nap ... Clouds should move faster than I across the sky ...

Running mad, as though we are going to miss something, often causes us to miss the point. And the point of the story of our lives is to render chaos meaningful, to identify the significant and share it with others. Eudora Welty said it best:

"The events in our lives happen in a sequence in time, but in their significance to ourselves, they find their own order ... it is a continuous thread of revelations."

Tony Evans: tevans@mtexpress.com




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