I – am – in – the – slow - read – ers’ - group – my – broth – er – is – in – the – foot – ball – team – my – sis – ter – is – a – ser – ver – my – lit – tle – broth – er – was – a – wise – man – in – the – in -fants’ - Christ – mas – play – I – am – in – the – slow – read – ers’ – group – that – is – all – I – am – in – I – hate – it.” Slow Reader from Please Mrs. Butler, Allan Ahlberg (Penguin, 1983)
Please Mrs. Butler - a favourite from my childhood, recalled via Jill’s opening contribution to this third diablogue. I can remember being amused by the poem Slow Reader, as I was by all of Ahlberg’s poems, which cast a comedic light over school tales at a time when school itself was an obstacle to Fun. What I didn’t appreciate, however, was the darker side of this poem. Looking back on it as an adult, it seems a poignant reflection on a child’s upbringing in modern society, where speed is the essence from Day One.
Image courtesy of www.singletracks.com
The question I want to ask is this: How, and why, has speed become a metric for success?
In the classroom, those slow to grasp words and numbers are deemed less fortunate than their speedier classmates and are quickly placed ‘bottom of the class’. On the sports field, the children who lag behind in a race or struggle to keep pace in a game are considered unworthy of making the team, and instead stand at the sidelines awaiting the tiredness of a faster player. When it comes to exams, if you can’t think fast enough or scrawl with sufficient haste to finish in the allotted time, you’re penalised in the grading system such that your prospects of success may be damaged for years to come. Irrelevant is the fact that you can think, write, run, read, add, subtract (and may do so more accurately than others); if it can’t be done quickly, well, better luck next time. Whatever the proverb might suggest, slow and steady does not win the race.
This is The Pace of Life. Jump on the treadmill at the age of three, and scramble. Keep scrambling. Because the pace only quickens with time. Pass through university, which - granted – carries us at varying speeds of ‘dead slow’, ‘stop’, and ‘scramble like fury’, and enter… The Rat Race. If you’re a glutton for speed, you’ll choose The Urban Rat Race. The City, where speed brings new anonymity, even hostility, to fellow mortals. Take New York, “the city that never sleeps”, where people hurry through life often oblivious to their surroundings, rarely acknowledging others even when jostled unceremoniously against each other on the subway. How did it come to be that “every second counts” so much that people are willing to squeeze uncomfortably into a crowded train each morning, face pressed against the window and inhaling the bodily odour of a co-traveller’s armpit, simply to save the two-minute wait for the next, emptier train? How did we reach the stage where people will brazenly grumble, groan and nip the heels of pedestrians dawdling unhurriedly along a city street? Can’t take The Pace? Get out of the city!
But in the urgency of modern life, there are refreshing moments of stillness. Travelling home this evening, I stumbled across a heart-warming scene. Typically, as the train stopped, passengers spilled from the opening doors and darted across one another in conflicting directions, in their anxiety to reach ‘Destination Next’. A busker was playing what I think was a bouzouki, in a lilting melody of highs and lows to which (again, typically) most passers-by turned a blind eye. Until one little girl, young enough still to be untouched by the demon of speed, stopped to watch. And as she watched, she began to dance. Freely, in the subway station, without a care in the world, she danced. And as she danced, the frantic dashers-by stopped to watch. And not only did they watch, they smiled.
The scene lasted for just a few moments, like a piece of slow motion film in a Hollywood blockbuster, before the onlookers gathered themselves up and remembered where they had to be. But it was a moment that reminded me how much we miss as we speed through life. There’s pleasure in slowness, which shouldn’t be forgotten. There’s quality of life and of living. Are we really such important stakeholders in the world these days, that catastrophe might strike if we pause awhile?
What is this life if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.
No time to stand beneath the boughs
And stare as long as sheep or cows.
No time to see, when woods we pass,
Where squirrels hide their nuts in grass.
No time to see, in broad daylight,
Streams full of stars, like skies at night.
No time to turn at Beauty’s glance,
And watch her feet, how they can dance.
No time to wait till her mouth can
Enrich that smile her eyes began.
A poor life this if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.”
Is it this need for speed that piles the pressure on today’s political leaders? Would Americans have reacted quite so wholeheartedly to “Yes, we can (But it might take a couple of years)”? I think we are increasingly conditioned by a digital, instant age to expect that same speed in all walks of life, from work to play, as you rightly point out.
Well put! It’s part of that “more” mentality, I think—more activities, more obligations, more places to be, till the day’s calendar is quite full and time is at an even greater premium.
Really loved the writing style for this post, too. Someone needs to start a non-journalistic blog…