THE LEGITIMACY OF DOING NOTHING FOR A WHILE
Another benefit that the blue flag dinner offers to all participants, regardless of age, is that of legitimizing the act of “doing nothing” for a short while. This reinforces the value and power of silence, or at least, stillness. You
are
doing something, of course, you're eating and talking and listening. But for this hour, you are not playing soccer, working on the computer, or talking on the phone. You are just beingâtogether.
This, I believe, goes a long way towards teaching kids and adults alike that it's all right to stop for a while, that event-to-event living comes at a great cost, and that pausing occasionally yields its own dividends. While there's good intention in sending your kids to one extracurricular activity after another, there is also the danger of conditioning them by way of this experience that to race from event-to-event is the sole approach to working life. For some parents at least, the desire to see kids involved and active, combined with their own momentum and event-to-event thinking might have swung the pendulum a little too far to one sideâto the point at which there is so much going on that time for decompression is completely lost.
Some parents, of course, might see nothing wrong with this, since activity keeps kids healthy and active. Similarly, adults without kids, who find themselves too busy for blue-flag dinners with partners and friends, might satisfy themselves that a busy life equals a fulfilled life. But once again, this reveals an addiction to immediacies that robs all of us of deeper, more profound understanding. Take, for example, the concept of accountability.
HOW PAUSE LEADS TO ACCOUNTABILITY
Event-to-event blindness, as I have demonstrated, leads to a kind of intellectual isolation. When people are given no time to pause, reflect, and process the stresses of the day, their sense of isolation deepens. For example, when we observe a person exhibiting road rage or merely driving aggressively, we observe that person demonstrate anger over having his route interrupted, his dignity supposedly mocked. An eruption occurs within the isolation of his event-to-event existence. Isolation, as the Dalai Lama points out in
The Art of Happiness
, magnifies suffering,
1
and a magnification of suffering quickly leads to overreaction. But it is quicker and easier, it seems, to accept this isolation as a fact of life and just keep moving. This is what Boxer the horse did in
Animal Farm
, described in our very first chapter.
Acceptance of bad habits leads to their legitimization. Observe, for example, how road rage has now been redefined clinically, as a condition called Intermittent Explosive Disorder (IED). Does everyone who claims to have IED actually have it, or are they just having a bad day or a bad week or a bad drive home? This legitimization of IED has been met with skepticism from some mental health professionals and social psychologists alike. The problem, they say, is that accepting road rage as a clinical condition tends to take the accountability for such behavior away from the individual and place it somewhere in the misty realms of society at large.
But why am I discussing road rage here, in a section about dining together as a family? Because the clinical legitimization of IED symbolizes a growing trend in the erosion of personal accountability, a trend that can be countered through simple,
slow
rituals such as pausing for dinner.
Let's see if there are other connections that can be made to support this idea:
⢠Email. We've talked a lot about email in this book. One of the major problems with email is that people send letters and attachments before they're truly thought-out and ready, so as to get that particular task off their desk in order to make room for the next one. The decision as to whether the letter is ready, appropriate, and serves the purpose is moot. It's now out there in the systemâthe loop. It's somebody else's problem. The accountability for the appropriateness of that letter has been eliminated through the
ambient momentum
of the workplace. But will this letter elicit a proper, timely response? Will it do its job effectively?
⢠Meetings. A person needs to schedule a meeting with a number of her colleagues. Knowing that no-one will be happy being forced into a meeting, she books the meeting online, allowing the software itself to inform the participants about the meeting. The potential difficulty of confronting these people has now been avoided. Accountability for ensuring a level of buy-in and participation from those around the table has been avoided. But will such techniques foster true collaboration and trust in the future?
⢠The accountant described in Chapter 3 puts off delivering bad news to his client by occupying himself with other tasks. Anything to avoid the confrontation with his client that he knows will be difficult. Accountability for creative human problem solving has been ducked. But will it lead to further business or referrals?
High-speed pressure tends to squeeze out of people the willingness and ability to account for their own actions and to be responsible for both the good and the bad in life. Is it any surprise, then, that accountability for road rage has now conveniently been shifted away from the individual himself? Or that coffee shops and fast food restaurants can be successfully sued for serving hot beverages? The loss of personal accountability threatens to rob society of innovators, leaders, and motivated individuals, and to rob individuals themselves of the gifts of self-determination and of questioning the world around them. We can prevent a great deal of this evasion of responsibility simply by ensuring time is spent with people we care about. This solution applies equally well to large families as it does to singles, and everyone in between. Make sure to make time to talk with people who can hear you, while you simultaneously hear yourself. Let the pressures of life find a slower, safer escape route.
NO TIME TO BE THE “BAD GUY”
Consider also the dilemma many overworked parents face in having to be the “bad guy” when discipline is required. When you come home from work late and there's only half an hour between the time you pull into the driveway and the time the kids go to bed, who wants to spend that time being stern? Well-intentioned parents know that discipline and guidance is necessary, of course, but that doesn't make it any easier. When there's little time to transition from the pressures of the workplace and those of home, the quality of the parent-child relationship suffers.
Discipline, like accountability, is like medicine inside a bitter pillâhard to take but essential to well-being. Children who do not grow up with the discipline of regular homework, supper, and bedtime hours, and then miss out on the rules and corrections that parents are duty-bound to give, will emerge unwittingly with a gaping hole where personal accountability should be. This is already evident in the spate of lawsuits recently launched against teachers and schools who fail a student or who giveaBwhen an A was desired. Is a low mark the fault of the student or the school? A loss of personal accountability guarantees that blame will be placed in someone else's hands.
Though the above examples focus largely on the relationship between kids and their parents, the same principles apply to other types of relationships, too. Observe the following case study:
Case Study: The Hit-and-Run Cyclist
In the summer of 2006, an elderly man exited from a health club where he had been enjoying his daily seniors' exercise workout. As he did so, a cyclist who was traveling on the sidewalk, crashed into him. The senior was knocked to the ground and suffered injuries to his head and face. Instead of apologizing or offering to help, the cyclist berated the old man, accusing him of getting in his way, and criticizing him for walking so slowly. The cyclist then took off, and it was left to a couple of good Samaritans to help the man to a hospital, where he was admitted for observation. This is certainly not an isolated case, but it highlights the type of thing that easily happens when immediate reactionism rules.
NO TIME TO BE A KID
Another reason for the need to
cool down
within the family portion of the 24-hour day has to do simply with overload. Children of all ages have schedules and distractions as much as any adult.
Nw i ly me dn2slp
Kids have already learned the addictive ways of the high-speed life and they don't want to (or can't) give it up. Sixty percent of children over eight years old in the UK carry cell phones, as do 90 percent of kids over age 12. There's even a special ringtone used by kids who desire unfettered access, set at a frequency that adults over the age of 20 can't hear.
2
Such devices are being used by kids all dayâduring class, and especially after bed-time, when active chatting and text messaging take the place of sleep.
A story in the
Globe and Mail
newspaper described the problem like this:
“Even before they get off the bus, they're already tired, and in class ⦠they're kind of dragging their heels and not as alert,” said Vancouver teacher Sharon Wyatt. â¦Yet parents themselves may be partly responsible for their children being constantly sleepy. ⦠Many who work late will deliberately keep their youngsters up so they can spend time together. Studies show [that sleep-deprived children] are more likely to suffer higher rates of learning difficulties, behavioral problems, obesity, illness, accidents ⦠lower levels of concentration, attention spans and creativity, a loss of short-term memory and an increase in hyperactivity.
Some sleep-deprived youngsters are even misdiagnosed with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder and could be unnecessarily medicated, said Dr. Val Kirk, medical director of the Pediatric Sleep Service at Alberta Children's Hospital in Calgary. “There's a lot of overlap ⦠between some of the symptoms.”
3
It's hard to keep up with all of this, but that's why
slowing down
is so important. Think what a mom or dad who adopts some of the principles of
slow
could do for the kids at home:
⢠Developing the skills to manage at-work workload
becomes
the ability to help a child plan for and complete homework, assignments, and study for exams.
⢠Establishing pace and balance to ensure the right work gets done the right way
becomes
the ability to teach a child the art of prioritization and clear thinking.
⢠Recognizing and discussing the value of having a mentor
becomes
an opportunity for the child to understand that she, too, can open up and talk with her parents about problems or difficulties.
⢠Eating a good morning breakfast
becomes
proof of its importance and legitimacy.
⢠Preparing and packing a good lunch into Mom and Dad's briefcase
becomes
a demonstration that eating and preparing meals is not a tedious chore but a legitimate and important component of the day.
⢠Eliminating the temptation to bring work home or to spend home time reading emails and text messages
becomes
a demonstration that work and life need balance and that it is in everyone's grasp.
⢠Eliminating the temptation to bring work home or to spend home time reading emails and text messages
also becomes
an opportunity to help a child's study efforts by asking him what he now
knows
about what he's just read. Learning is best achieved not by simply reading something but by talking about it after.
⢠Eliminating the temptation to bring work home or to spend home time reading emails and text messages
also becomes
an opportunity to observe a child's Internet usage, especially when chat rooms are involved.
Tips for Transitioning between Work and Home
⢠Use the commute or the drive as decompression time. Leave the cell phone in the briefcase and listen to music, or just blue-sky.
⢠Develop a habit of closure at the office. Use the last few minutes at work to close down your email and to change your daily voice mail greeting to tomorrow's date. This helps define the end of a day.
⢠If tensions from work follow you home, use a “trouble tree.” Based on a traditional poem, a trouble tree is a tree, a bush, or any other object located just outside the front door upon which people “hang” their work troubles before entering the house. Pause a moment to picture this before you walk through the door. Not only does this help avoid bringing stresses upon the family, but, as the parable goes, many of the troubles tend to get blown off the tree overnight.
In the 1960s an experiment was done to learn just how long a person can go without sleep. A student volunteer, Randy Gardner, was kept awake and active by a rotation of experimenters, who kept him busy doing quizzes and physical coordination tests. He was able to stay involved for nine days before succumbing to total fatigue. Nine days. The interesting thing about this, however, was that once he was allowed to sleep, he slept for just 14 hours and then woke up fully refreshed. His brain and body, just like ours, was able to recover and refresh in a time period far less than the equivalent of nine nights' worth of sleep.
This story illustrates very vividly the value of downtime in all of our lives. An evening with friends or family will do more for your intellect, and therefore your career, than will another all-nighter over the computer. A lunch away from your desk and away from your work will do more for your daylight productivity than will lunch over the keyboard. Calling an official end to the day sets in place the terrific recuperative faculties that all of us contain, physically, inside of us.
This book is obviously about the value of slowing down, primarily in the workplace. This last chapter extends briefly into home life simply to demonstrate how valuable
cooling down
can be for everyoneâbusy working people as well as their families and friends. Not everyone has school-age kids, of course, but everyone has people with whom they and enjoy mutual support. Are you making enough time in your day, or week, or year to ensure that these people get the best from youâand that you get the best from them? Are the tasks and pressures that you currently face sufficiently important to justify placing these people second or third? Or do these all-consuming tasks just
seem
to be so? Do you have the ability to negotiate alternate dates, deadlines, and deliveries? Can you relate to your manager or customers in such a way as to give yourself permission to go home on a timely basis?