Rethinking Urgency

To act, or not act, or build a bridge in-between.

Photo by Olesya Grichina on Unsplash

“Things are very urgent. We need to slow down.”

These are words that come from a colleague of mine, an Indigenous woman elder. Even though they were spoken a few years ago, they’ve been haunting me ever since.

I use the word “haunting” lightly, of course. But I’ve noticed that no matter what I’m doing, her words keep rattling around my headspace. On the train, doing the dishes, settling down for the night-my mind continues to wrestle with them, with plenty of food for thought and bewilderment.

I don’t think I understand what they mean, and this writing isn’t an attempt to extract that meaning. I just know that I love them, their familiarity and their mystery. I’ve been enjoying their elusive quality, the way they feel like they speak a truth about my life without fully revealing themselves. Whenever you come across words that affect you like that, I think they’re worth pursuing and seeing what they can teach you.

In my own pursuit, I’ve been reflecting on the fact that nothing about my life in the last five years (or so) has been slow. Everything has felt urgent. Most of the time I feel like I’m operating at maximum speed and capacity, stretching all of my resources to meet ever-growing needs. The more I get to do, the more I get to see, which means there’s always more to do. I tend to be led by the question, “If you believe you can do it, why not see if you can?”, and that guides a lot of how I show up in life.

It’s a complicated relationship: moving through life that way makes me feel alive, and I think it allows me to explore the best of myself. I feel deeply involved with my own existence, working with the essence of myself for the sake of something bigger. It also has its limits: I’m only one person, and constantly pushing at the edges of what you are in the present can be exhausting. I don’t think I’m trying to accomplish or prove anything, per se-I just want to see more of myself as I grow. I’ve always had the sense that self-discovery is infinite, and action is a key part of what allows that exploration to happen.

Especially as someone who works in healthcare and the caregiving profession, I see these values and instincts show up all of the time. When you’re surrounded by people who are highly trained, working ridiculous hours, working to serve needs that will never go away no matter how hard or how long you exert yourself-it’s easy to feed off that energy. There’s something exhilarating and dangerous about the commitment. It’s deeply motivating and ultimately futile, because the work will always be there. At the same time, you get to feel like you’re a part of something significant, working alongside other humans who really care about what they do.

There’s a lot of speed in that quality of work, but not much rhythm. And there’s a big difference between speed and rhythm, isn’t there? I think what I find striking about my colleague’s words is that they suggest rhythm, flow, a way of moving through life that disables the habit of doing everything “at speed”. The idea of rhythm wakes me up to a different way of experiencing life, in which I can do the same things but with a transformed relationship to activity.

I think I get to see some of this within my particular role within healthcare. One of the things that I find interesting about my work as a spiritual care provider is that I’m the one person on a care team that isn’t trying to keep someone alive. Everyone else is deeply involved in prolonging, extending, or maintaining someone’s lifespan as much as possible. That’s not my job, and because of that I’m involved in that person’s life in a much different way. What I’m doing, and how I’m doing it, looks a lot different than what drives the often frenetic pace of a hospital.

While of course I want my patients to live long and happy lives, I suppose illness and death aren’t a “problem” for me in a way that it is for the medical system. In my work, I’m engaging those experiences without trying to solve anything, or fix someone’s body. Instead, I’m participating in a person’s life rhythm: stepping into the movement of their world and being present to what’s already happening. There’s plenty of work that can be done, but it’s happening at a much different speed.

I’ve been wondering about how I can relate to my own life in a similar way. When I’m not at my best, I can feel like life is a laundry list of pressing problems that need solving, vital tasks which need completion. Sometimes, rest only feels reasonable when all of those things can get done. I notice urges to keep seeing patients, to continue meeting requests, to keep showing up, instead of pausing or having more transition.

On top of that, there are so many things going on in the world that I feel deserve or demand my attention. I feel a sense of responsibility as a member of a community and society that encourages personal obligations. It feels like there’s a lot of things that need to happen in the world right now, and quickly.

Things in my life feel very urgent. I need to slow down.

Recently I had to take a medical leave from work because of a sports-related injury. I wasn’t able to walk for a time, and all of my work depends on my mobility. At face-value, you might think this was a blessing in disguise: some time off from work, some extra days to rest, an unexpected but welcome interlude to the daily hustle.

I was shocked at how hard it was for me. I really tried to lean into it-sleeping in, leaving more time for my meditation practice, putting my phone away and allowing the days to ease and wander. I was surprised at how hard it was to relax, how often my mind went to the urge to do something. I felt adrift in an ocean of time, feeling guilty for having the chance to float. I even began to berate myself internally for getting injured in the first place, feeling like I was abandoning the work and motivations I find so much value in.

It made me sad to feel these things, because I knew these were learned behaviors. It caused me to reflect on my childhood, before I knew what urgency felt like. I remember reading all day without a single thought about what time it was. Playing outside in the park with my friends from morning until sunset. Spending hours in museums learning about dinosaurs, or earthquakes, or Egypt, for no reason other than satisfying my own curiosity. I’m grateful to have had many years of life without any sense of urgency at all-living life for life’s sake, the moment in front of me the most important moment I’ve ever lived. In retrospect, there’s something about that experience that feels almost sacred now, a holiness of presence that feels increasingly rare and hard to come by.

I don’t think this sacredness is totally lost to me, but it could use a bit of revival. The riddle of my colleague’s words feels like a portal into that experience, calling me to consider how I can show up to what matters to me without compromising how I nourish myself. If I’m taking the time to sit down and be present with my patients, how I can do the same for myself? Can I hold the hand of my life in the way I practice holding the hands of others?

I recently heard my vocation described as “doing a lot, with very little, with great skill”. I love that definition, and I think it can be applied to how our modern lives can be lived with greater authenticity, rhythm, and purpose. We are all called to be and do different things-how can we respond to that from a place that sustains us? How can we encourage activity in a way that honors the cycles, seasons, and patterns of being human?

After all, it’s inhuman to expect ourselves to do everything, or be every kind of person. Things are urgent right now, but perhaps responding with that same energy is getting in our way somehow. Maybe the most urgent thing that’s needed is to reflect on what that means for us, and move closer towards living life from a place of presence, intention, and center.

In the spirit of reminding myself that this is all possible despite the grind of modernity, here are some ways I’ve been trying to live this out:

Some Things I Recently Did or Saw While Slowing Down

• People-watching while eating passionfruit croissants and grape and olive focaccia with my beloved. I remembered that I much prefer to watch the clouds scroll through the sky than to scroll on my phone.

• Finishing The Silmarillion by J.R.R. Tolkein. A behemoth of a book that’s taken me a year to finish, and so worth it.

• Debating the most ideal restaurant experience with friends old and new while waiting for Taiwanese breakfast sandwiches (and more pastries, of course).

• A skyline sunset from my bedroom window, from start to finish.

• Ran, an incredible cinematic adaptation of Shakespeare’s King Lear by Japanese director Akira Kurosawa.

• Many games of chess that sometimes took weeks to finish. My hot take is that chess wasn’t meant to be played quickly, and I’ve never been a fan of the bullet/speed chess variety.

• Reducing my screen time on my phone to 2.5 hours per day. Trying to look up and say hello to the world more often!

• The creation of this Substack, which is a repurpose of a website I was previously running and feeling stressed out about. I’ve been grateful for the way this space has offered a restful reset to how I engage writing, and consume social media in general.

Thanks for reading!