Recently I have found that I spend a couple of hours a week, each, with three elderly people. The youngest, my mother, is 78 and the oldest is 84. All are reasonably fit and mentally alert but they have this in common - they all move more slowly that I do. Not a little more slowly - way more slowly. It takes my mother on average twenty minutes to make coffee when I could probably do the same task in five minutes. I have learned to slow my speech and my movement to match an entirely different pace. Well, it might be more accurate to say that I am learning a whole different time.
Initially it was like be trapped like a fly in treacle slowly oozing out of a jar. Frustrating and impatient making. I would buzz futilely against something I could absolutely not change.
As the weeks have gone on I have adapted and learned to pace myself differently and my time with these people has become a sort of moving meditation from which, if I get it right, I emerge into my frenzied world refreshed and alert.
Surprised I find that in my arrogance I offered them the "gift" of my time and find instead that they give me the very considerable gift of theirs.
I think I understand how this might feel to you - some days when I sit to meditate/pray, I am restless and moving too quickly - this is an inner moving more than physical - my inner being is busy. It takes time to slow myself down. But in the end it is a gift. Like slowing yourself down to be fullly present for these people...and in the end you are the one gifted.
ReplyDeleteYou say it so much better than me. That is exactly it.
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