Running in Place, and Getting There Fast

My favorite magazines at the checkout are full of advice these days on 'how to do more with less.' It's big recession fodder, I guess.

How to stretch hamburger with the creative use of ketchup! How to make my own fabric softener! How to get a health-club quality workout while unpacking the groceries!

And I've tried them all. 

Some are great; some are really stupid. But all have something in common - more ways to pile more work into the same amount of hours.

Until we explode.

My grandmother used to say that life is a Ferris wheel, not a race to win. I wish I'd listened. I wish I hadn't thought that multi-tasking was the Holy Grail. Because I've lost too much time in a blur, doing too many things at once - and never remembering any of it.

A while back it occurred to me that maybe the wisest, happiest people in the world weren't the busiest. Maybe there's no prize for who can get the most done. Or even, come to think of it, lot of upsides.

Well, hell.

Instead of packing days so full that I'm juggling dishes and unfinished homework and that last text message an hour after I should have been in bed - what about letting go a little more? What about saying "Stop"? Would the world stop spinning?

Could the recession be teaching how to do less with more? More deliberation, more attention, ... more breathing room?

I used to visit my grandmother down at her condo in Florida. She was a horrible cook, and I mean in a Dear-God-I-can-see-the-Ptomaine way. So I'd give her the job of making toast while I heated the soup and cut up the melon. She'd make us little cocktails in 50 year-old crystal. Then we would pile it all on this little wheeled cart she had and push it to the enclosed balcony.

Dinner overlooking the water; light flashing on waves. Once in a while a manatee would surface. Or a boat would slip in to dock, sails slapping softly.

She'd talk about what the President was doing wrong, what the U.N. should do better, and the shopping we should get done the next day. I'd talk about what the President was doing right, what NATO should do better, and the shopping we should do the next day.

"Would you like to go for a walk on the beach, later?" she'd ask.

"I think I'd rather take a late swim in the pool," I'd answer.

She'd make a face a sigh. Hair was not meant for getting chlorine on after cocktails. We'd compromise and walk on the docks, waving to her friends as we'd go.

Those dinners mean the world to me now. I squeeze them tight against my heart when my missing of her overwhelms me. Instead of rushed, forgotten meals stuffed between one activity or another? They were small celebrations - deliberate pauses in the day.

It was about sequencing, instead of multi-tasking. About being in the moment, in a way I've forgotten.

My grandmother's world was a great place to visit.  I eschewed it as too rigid for my outlook, and too sedate for my passions. That was the oversight of youth - throwing the baby out with the bath water. She had something to teach me. About the joys that come with keeping life manageable. About finishing something before starting another.

The recession forced us to curtail the rabid dozen-errand trips that would suck our Saturday mornings and the oversheduled activities that would bloat our weekdays. Made us weigh much more heavily each expense we face. It has been a weight off my shoulders - one I didn't know I was carrying. Less buzz of busy-ness. Less "stuff".

It's awesome.

I'm ready to celebrate again - who we are, as we are, with what we already have. And I can't wait to see THAT in the magazines.

The future is something which everyone reaches at the rate of 60 minutes an hour, whatever he does, whoever he is. - C. S. Lewis

Elizabeth Blair York was a blogger known as the Corporate Mommy. A freelance writer and teacher, she's living simpler with her family outside Chicago. 

Original post to Chicago Moms Blog.