Moving fast and slow

GIVEN our personal needs and those of the others, as well as the many conditions and varying circumstances in our life, and most of all, our ultimate goal which is spiritual and supernatural, we have to learn how to move both fast and slow in our daily life.

The art of knowing when to move fast and when to move slow is getting very relevant these days, what with all the developments around. It should be learned as early as possible, even during the toddler stage, and pursued steadily and progressively without let-up, because we can never learn enough of it.

It cannot be denied that there is now a widening area of information, data, developments in practically all fields, etc., to be covered, and so we just have to know how to cope with that reality, moving fast as much as possible if only to catch up.

But neither can we deny the need to also go slow, because we need to study these pieces of information and data and the many developments, digest them, so to speak, to be able to have a good global picture of things, without getting confused and much less, lost. They should lead us to our ultimate goal.

In the life of Christ himself, we can see how busy he was, going from one place to another preaching, and attending to all sorts of people with all their needs and requests, such that, according to the gospel, he and his apostles hardly had time even to eat.

But in spite of all that, Christ managed also to go slow to be able to pray and talk with great intimacy with the Father. He always felt the need for this, even if we can say there was no need for him to do that, since as the Son he is always one with the Father. For that, he often had to wake up early in the morning and go to a certain deserted place.

Of course, that’s Christ who as God was in full control of his time and everything else. But for us, we need to learn the art of when to move fast and when to move slow little by little, if only to reflect as much as possible the ways of Christ who is “the way, the truth and the life” for us.

In this regard, given the way we are, it would be good if we can avail of some plan or structure of our day where we can have some time when we can be moving slowly, so we can study, pray, meditate and savor the finer points as well as the bigger things in life, and some time also when we can move fast, busy doing all sorts of things.

We have to realize that without this plan or structure, we would be fully at the mercy of changing conditions and circumstances. We won’t have some stability and cannot be the master of our own life, directing it to where it should go. We need to get a handle on our whole life.

The process of learning this art will always have to go through an inclined plane. In the beginning, we may have to be told exactly, like what is done with little children, when to move fast and when to move slow. Later on, when we would already have some feel of how to distinguish the two, we can do it with some supervision, until we arrive at the point when we, on our own, can know exactly how to distinguish between the two.

Just the same, this is always going to be a dynamic affair. Everyday, with all the varying conditions and circumstances, we always have to make adjustments.