Goldilocks, the Tortoise and the Hare

Too Fast

The speed of things affects me. I react with worry or satisfaction based on how things seem to be moving along. The pace of a novel I'm reading , the progress of a checkout line, a project at work, the germination of a seed. When they are going far too slowly, my patience is challenged. But it's more than my patience being challenged. It's that things just aren't proceeding at the "right" speed, the expected, serviceable and optimum speed. The Goldilocks, this-is-just-right speed.

We all have a bit of Goldilocks inside. She's the one who wouldn't stop until things were "just right." You know, the oatmeal, the bed. This just right is how we all more or less want things. Not too fast, not too slow, just right. Yet, troubling or even catastrophic pacing and timing frustrations are common. They vex us day-in and day-out. Something doesn't arrive on time. Someone is not on time. We are not on time. Perhaps we went too quickly and because of our haste we are out of breath and must walk instead of run. (Literally or figuratively.) When we underperform vis a vis the clock and our expectations, we are likely to think of the F-word: failure. And we might go so far, some of us, as blaming ourselves even for Acts of God. As when I damned the Echinacea seeds we planted in late April -- and they eventually came up in late June. We thought they had died. The packet said ten days. "Where are they?" we asked, when they weren't "on time." It can't be the soil. We watered. We waited. It must be me. I somehow...failed.

We are infected by a need to keep up. When we don't, we lose ground, and sometimes face. Our rewards are not always just compensation for the workout we endure. But we are apt to turn into wind-up toys unless we do something about it. What are the antidotes to this hurry, hurry? As for myself, I like to run. It helps me slow down. A bit of a paradox, don't you think? When I run, you see, I am seldom concerned with how fast I go. I remove myself from the imposition of the keep-up-the-pace ritual that seems to run workaday life. I find the "just right" pace and go with it. The wind in Foster City blows at my back or directly into my face from off the Bay whose dancing waters I let hypnotize me as I round the landmarks I have invested with familiarity. A puddle, a bench, a view of the bridge. They tell me where I am in relation to my course. I am not far from the route of the Olympic torchbearer, who recently brought out the local denizens to gape and glory. The torchbearer, you see, was traveling by wheelchair.

Life's tempos pivot and change like Vivaldi's Four Seasons. On the sense of time passing, my Grandmother once told me, the years slip past more quickly as you age. I wonder if it will be the same for me.

Too Slow

Here is a special language gap: I don't know of a word that quite sums up the feeling we experience when something is going too quickly, and we want it to slow down. An orchestra conductor can convey this without words through a simple gesture that resembles a triangle. He draws this triangle in the air and it happens. But, unlike a chef d'orchestre, not all eyes are on us. We cannot always persuade others to accomodate our need to fall back, to rest, to regroup -- even if we draw a thousand triangles in the air.

So what then? When things are too slow, we'd say I'm bored or my patience is wearing thin. I have ants in my pants. I am chomping at the bit. So, continuing this equestrian theme, how about if we just settle on "Whoa!" Will Whoa! work? It works on horses. On humans or the world at large, though, it's likely to be as effective as standing and gesticulating little triangles in the air. But, sometimes you just have to say Whoa! , get off the horse, and hope it doesn't wander too far so you can get back in the saddle. I believe some things really should be lived at a 19th Century pace. Enough of life whizzes by at 21st Century speed -- particularly if you are involved in anything that smacks of the electronic frontier, the Internet Revolution. Its clock ticks at a maddening pace. So, try to let some of your life be slow, slow like the way Charlie from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, consumed his chocolate bar: each day he took one nibble from it to make it last and last and last.

Just Right

Before there was a concept of time, no clocks or calendars, people wanted to have some way of marking time. They asked the Emperor, who said "Let's have a river crossing race. Its outcome will tell those animals that are best representative of the passing of time." All kinds of critters turned out. Sheep, snake, dragon, rabbit, rat. Long story short, it's the rat who won this archetypal celestial race from which derive the Chinese Astrological signs. The rat beat out the cat by pushing him into the river and climbing behind the ox's ear, riding him until he approached the finish line and then leaping forward to victory. Other animals found themselves in similar mixups and imbroglios, which set their common traits from then forward.

I sometimes wish to be a rat -- in the above sense of the word -- to get there sooner. I want to be what they call a quick learn, pick up new skills, plow through books on this topic and that. As for when I can do what I love as opposed to utilitarian things that sometimes rank higher priority in my life well, I just have to slip them in here and there. Sometimes it seems that a day is not complete unless somehow I feel I have tricked time. Time waits for no man, but has been known to sit in the lobby for an occasional woman.

A good measure of time? The period in which an American living in the United States, not attending college, not surrounded by very many native speakers takes to learn Chinese. "It's hard to learn," people have told me. I know, I am in the race. I am seeing the great distance ahead. But I am proud of the 80-word vocabulary I have stolen from the Great Keeper of Languages. I have been slowly advancing in my Mandarin studies as my time and energy permit. And like those animals in the race, I have a strategy, too. Got my flashcards, got my books, got my Chinese movies. I also ask total strangers -- and sometimes a good, more patient friend, for impromptu lessons. "How do you say 'What's your name?' How? What was that? Can you repeat that...the last part...no, the part before that." Finally, after the stranger slows down, I am able to approximate the phrase, or at least my conscripted teacher is so tired of this intrusion on her day that she nods approvingly, as though to say: "Yes, that's it."

The next part of my method is to find a scrap of paper to write down (Pinyin style) what my teacher has just taught me. I walk away with a useful little Roman alphabet transcription, repeating Ni jiow shem-muh ming-dz, Ni jiow shem-muh ming-dz, Ni jiow shem-muh ming-dz. There, I know it by heart, I'll think. "Put away that piece of paper. You know it. You don't need that paper anymore," says a voice inside me, in English. I put the scrap in the bottom of my U-shaped purse. That night the piece of paper is taken from the U and tossed into the W. The wastebasket.

When I see my friend, the one who grew up in Philadelphia of Irish stock, who knows about cheesesteaks, worked for the Pew family, sells African sculpture and is fluent in Chinese, I say:

"Ni how (How are you), Patrice. I learned something new."
"What is it?" she asks.
"It's 'What is your name'," then fail miserably to remember what was written on the piece of paper I threw away the week before. "It's...what is it?"
"Ni jiow shem-muh ming-dz." she says.

I think of that adage: the faster you go, the behinder you get. No doubt I'll get there. No one is forcing me to learn Mandarin. I'm doing it on my own schedule -- for the love of it. Perhaps on New Year's eve 1999, I'll be able to say "Well, here it is finally, the 21st Century. Whoa!" in my cute little Wai-gwo ren Chinese.

 

 

Sites of Related Interest

COBOL Goldilocks
FLUXUS
Swatch Collectors Club

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