Robert Gale Ongley

Month: June 2021

  • TAKE IT SLOW

    Overrated! Speed feels good. Thrilling at times. Once we’ve had it, we want more of it. It’s addicting. What was once fast is now considered slow, even to the degree of being annoying. The need for speed erodes our ability to be here now. Well, let’s take a little of that precious time and celebrate going slowly.

    Forget What You Know

    Knowing what you know about time is mostly wrong. Einstein said time is relative, which for me means time is not a set, known quantity. One experiment showed that a highly accurate atomic clock flown around the earth ran slightly slower than an identical one that was left on the ground. Perception of time is clearly different from person to person. The student sitting in a boring classroom sees five minutes as a half-hour or so. Meanwhile, another student playing in the school band for the same period may sail through with a virtual wind at her back.

    What’s Important

    It shouldn’t matter whether you’re fast or slow when you’re working or playing or you’re idle. I’m getting right to the point early in this post and I’ll let the remainder of the article work itself out without any planning on how to pace it. Time be damned! It does matter what you’re experiencing as you’re doing whatever you’re doing. I submit here and now that you should be right there with whatever is happening in the moment and grokking the hell out of it. Immersing yourself, absorbing as much as you are capable of, resisting nothing about it allows for the full experience with all its energy and inherent enrichment.

    I’ve grown away from that over the years, but I have recently remembered that I know how to do it. The power to take it slow and enjoy something for all its worth is still within me. In fact, it’s part of who I am. I daresay it’s part of everyone, but there must be many who would not only disagree with the concept, but also are repelled by it. Taking it slow represents boredom to them. Taking it slow doesn’t mean you’re moving at a snail’s pace. Flying through work for many could be done mindfully and taking in all the nuance of the fleeting instant. In my estimation, these people are gifted. I just don’t possess that gift and I happen to function best at my own pace. Long live difference!

    Perspectives

    There are wiser people than me who have written some eloquent words about the wisdom of living slow. For instance, the Moody Blues recorded a song called Candle of Life that touches me deeply. The hook goes, “Burn slowly the candle of life.” That puts me in the perfect state of mind for how life should be lived.

    Here’s a book excerpt that nails it for me. “The best thing about knitting is its slowness,” says Murphy. “It is so slow that we see the beauty inherent in every tiny act that makes up a sweater. So slow that we know the project is not going to get finished today–it may not get finished for many months or longer–and that allows us to make our peace with the unresolved nature of life. We slow down as we knit.”
    — Carl Honoré (In Praise of Slowness: Challenging the Cult of Speed)

    What a concept–the Cult of Speed. That’s the kind of thing I was alluding to in my introduction above. If it isn’t fast, it’s inferior. I believe the human race is in a phase where we are habitually reaching for increased speed in almost everything. Examples abound. High speed internet isn’t enough for some–it must be highest speed internet. Same day shipping. Same day service. Speed dating. Baseball was once considered action-packed, but now is often seen as boring by football, basketball and even soccer fans. The agony of waiting for a website or streaming service to stop buffering is almost unbearable, whereas the same wait for the same result 40 years ago would have been a technological marvel.

    The Ecstasy of Slow

    The array of hasteless activities to be celebrated in mellow yellow mode is far-ranging and easily available. Pull up a stump or a lawn chair and go fireside. Gaze into the flames until they fade into dying embers. Drop a line into your nearest lake or stream and fish your cares away. Sink into a good book and really immerse yourself in that world. For a more proactive approach, take on a project in your favorite art or craft to get the same type of enjoyment the knitter savors. That’s the key word right there. Savor every moment, every hour and every day. Burning slowly the candle of life lights a glow that may last a lifetime.

  • PERSISTENCE

    I wonder when I became a persistent person. Was I born this way? If so, I didn’t notice it until somewhere along about mid-life. Humor me please as I turn back the pages of my memory in search of a day or an event when I might have evolved into it.

    Back, Back, Back…

    There’s evidence of this persistence in my writing. I haven’t devoted proper time to it very often in my life, but I peck away at my projects. I’ve been working on my current novel for over three years now, but it nears completion finally. My novel From the Beginning was started in about 1993 and wasn’t finished until 2013. I’ve knocked out many short stories, songs and scripts through the years. Part of my memoir was written concurrently with my novel Boundless Trust and took our memoir writers group to complement my own intention to get it done. Earlier in my life, I wanted to write, but couldn’t get around to it consistently. Some stories got a start, but didn’t make it to completion.

    About a week ago, a group of my former co-workers from American Family Insurance had a reunion of sorts, as we tend to do every couple years or so. It made me think again about my primary career as an insurance adjuster. I started with that company when I was 49 years old and as the years passed in this high-stress occupation, I was building a pension and a 401K account with an eye on retirement at age 65. I was approximately 10 years in when the company changed. They stopped hiring new adjusters, which meant as employees quit or were terminated or retired, no replacements were brought on board. The remaining adjusters were forced to take on larger workloads. Other changes made it increasingly difficult to do the job with the care and attention to detail that translated to good customer service. The stress made the job less confrontable, less doable actually. I wanted to get out of there so badly, but I had a lot invested in time and retirement goals, some of which I would potentially lose if I resigned. I stayed on and did my best, drawing on my reserves of persistence just to keep going despite skyrocketing levels of anxiety. I had my first panic attack while working for the company. I hung in, though, until they fired me because I was not “a good fit.” It took 12 years for them to come to that conclusion, and this despite my winning customer service awards in these later years as an American Family adjuster.

    For better or for worse, I’ve shown that when I get an idea in my head, I’m going to do what I need to do to carry it out. An example of this is when I decided I was going to travel around the USA for a year back in 1973. When the targeted time came, I was not going to be stopped. Maybe to my own detriment, I departed without enough savings, leaving behind a good job where I was appreciated and a relationship that was working better than any I had ever had. My car died two weeks into the trip, but I was determined to complete my trip. I did the rest without a car.

    I may have first learned about persistence in paying my debt to society over the course of about 18 months. I landed in jail as a naïve kid, ashamed and afraid. Once I knew I was going to be there a while, I put my head down and lived a day at a time in many respects to get through to the other side.

    How far back does this persistence go? I didn’t show it much in high school, nor in elementary school. So, maybe it came with the dawning of maturity. While that was unfolding, though, I was persistently holding on to my adolescence in many ways well into my 20’s. Funny twists and turns on the path.

    A Boon to All Who Use It

    For the person who sets out to accomplish a difficult or complex task, there will come times when it seems beyond their capabilities. Writing a book requires solid planning, determination without end and a propensity for problem solving. Making a business work calls for the same elements. Whatever the goal, when going gets tough, those who strive to get to the end must bear down, assess the situation and push on through to the finish line. That’s what it takes.

    Persistence is a tool we all can use. There’s nothing to show it’s an inherited trait. It can be developed with our will power. If you want to rebuild a classic car or get a degree or mend a damaged relationship, you can start with a decision, fuel it with your will and refuse to give up. Time and distractions will scheme to pull you away, but if you stay strong in your resolve, you can complete anything you set out to do.