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blazerina · 7 years

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Love Despite (James x MC) PART 3

Prompt: Don’t ask me to say I don’t love you.

Characters: James x MC (Bridget) from The Freshman

Rating: PG (some mild language and adult situations)

Author’s Note: This is my entry for round 16 of Choices Creates. Thank you to the lovely @hollyashton and the awesome @texanhusker for hosting this week’s competition. The prompt was incredibly challenging and took a lot for me to write, but I hope y'all are as happy with the final product as I am.

I will post this work in three parts, so be sure to follow along and read them all! As always, I am open to thoughts, feedback and comments on any part of this piece. I am so grateful for everyone who reads my work. Love, peace and many blessings!

Summary: Bridget and James are unexpectedly reunited after breaking up years ago. Will their feelings for each other remain true after all this time?

—

Part 3 - Present Day

The evening of the library dedication, there was also a more formal reception for distinguished alumni and donors to the university. Bridget knew James would be there again, but at least this time she had alcohol and other people to use as buffers. She had successfully navigated the ceremony without speaking to him. She had only a few more hours to go. She could do this.

James was terrified of seeing her again. He knew he would, but he could hardly keep himself together. He had never been able to move on from the night they said goodbye all those years ago. He had written her letters almost every day for the first few months they were apart. He wondered if she had ever received or even read any of them. When he decided to stop mailing them, he continued to write them – and every now and then he would continue to journal his thoughts and feelings about missing her.

James’ first novel was selling great and he was making it big in New York. He wanted nothing more than to be able to share it with her. He had spent so much time wishing he could make things different; wishing he could go back in time. Did she even know the character in his book was based on her? He was lost in thought as he sat in his car waiting to go into the reception. Here goes nothing. He thought to himself as he walked in.

Bridget was smiling and putting on a brave face but there was nothing she wanted to do more than run away. “We are so proud of you.” Professor Atiyah was talking with Bridget, praising her for her hard work and what she had been able to do with her life.

After Bridget’s father passed away from his illness, she made it back to Hartfeld and worked while going to school. She was able to finish her degree by taking classes during mini-semesters, holiday breaks and summers. After she graduated she landed a great job as an editor with a publishing firm in New York City and never looked back.

James eyes locked on Bridget the moment he entered the room. She looked amazing. She seemed happy. He didn’t know if she was with anyone, but he didn’t care. Her eyes were bright and she was smiling as she talked with the professor. Her black dress was tight in all the right places and accentuated her curves in all the right ways.

“Champagne, Mr. Ashton?” a server interrupted his thoughts as he was transfixed on Bridget.

“Not yet.” He smiled. “When I’m ready to celebrate, I’ll come find you.” He focused again on Bridget and made a bee-line towards her.

“Excuse me, Professor Atiyah. I’m sorry to interrupt. Bridget, may I have a word?” James wasn’t sure what had gotten into him but for the first time in a while, he had gumption and he wasn’t going to squander this chance to make things right.

He decided he wasn’t going to let Bridget go tonight without telling her how he felt about her then, and how he still feels about her now.

“Of course.” The professor nodded her head graciously to Bridget and walked off to join another circle of patrons.

“James, I –“ before Bridget could even respond, James hands were holding her face and he lips were on hers. He was kissing her hard, honestly, earnestly. He had never wanted anything more in his life.

On instinct, Bridget melted into him and returned the kiss; surprising herself with how easily her lips remembered his. She wrapped her arms around his neck and leaned in even more intently to his touch and his embrace.

It seemed a while until they pulled away from each other. Neither one of them wanted to let the other go. Bridget’s eyes filled with tears while James locked his eyes on hers, refusing to look away. Both of them were speechless.

Taking her hand, James demanded politely “Dance with me.”

He led Bridget out onto the dance floor and she followed him, wiping away a few small tears that had tried to escape her eyes.

“I don’t know what to say.” She whispered as she put her forehead against his, while the music continued in the background.

“Let me do the talking.” James said sweetly. “There’s so much that I have regretted since that night at the pond on your grandparents’ land…” he started.

They continued to sway to the music while he whispered in her ear, to make sure she heard him loud and clear.

“I’ve been writing to you and about you since the day we said goodbye. Did you get any of my letters?” Bridget nodded and swallowed hard, feeling incredibly guilty.

“Actually, I wrote to you too!” Bridget yelled, over the music. “I even wrote about you in my journal, pretty much every night. But I never had the guts to send the letters, like you did. I saved every single one, James. They were all so beautiful.”

“There’s one that I wrote that I keep with me, in my wallet. It’s just a little verse, a few lines that capture so many of my regrets regarding you. When I left, I never knew if I’d see you again or if our paths would cross, but I held onto hope that one day they would. You are stronger than anyone I know. You’ve been through and survived so much. Without a doubt, I know this is right, Bridget. You are meant for me. And I know, in my heart, you feel the same way. You’re just too stubborn and prideful to admit it.” He smirked as she smiled at him. “You are my girl, forever and always. I’ve never been able to let you go, after all this time. Please, tell me that you’ll be mine. Tell me that you’ll hold my hand and be by my side the rest of my life. That dress, your smile, your eyes, YOU. You are perfect. I don’t deserve you, but I still want to have you…will you have me? That’s the question.” He spun her around, hoping and praying that she would respond positively to him pouring his heart out.

“I’m the one who doesn’t deserve you.” She reached up and caressed his cheek. “You’ve been in my corner from day one. I know I wouldn’t be who I am or where I am without you. Even from afar you’ve silently supported me and guided me; you didn’t even know but you were always in my heart…in everything I did…I thought for sure you would have moved on from me by now. I’m so glad you haven’t.” She reached up and kissed him quickly again.

“I remember the first day you came into Vasquez’s office with Kaitlyn. I knew then that you were it for me. That was the end of life as I knew it.” James laughed.

“Leave it to Vasquez to bring us together not once, but twice.” Bridget chuckled. “I can hear him quoting Faulkner now…”

“You know there was one time, only one that I can recall, when Vasquez and I talked about love. I had opened up to him about how I felt about you, actually.” James took Bridget’s hand and led her to a cocktail table where they could continue their conversation.

“ME?” She asked, mouth open wide, gawking at the thought. “I can’t believe you never told me this!” She hit him playfully on the arm.

“I was lamenting to Vasquez that you were so perfect and I was so horrible, how could someone like you ever want to be with someone like me. Sound familiar?” James asked, arching an eyebrow. Bridget blushed and looked away sheepishly. “Yes, it does.” She replied.

“He quoted Faulkner, of course…and said: ‘You don’t love because: you love despite; not for the virtues, but despite the faults.’ And that is so, so true…it really stuck with me.” “Thank you for loving me despite my faults.” Bridget looked into James eyes. “Thank you for pursuing me and sticking with me all this time. I’m so grateful for today.” She grabbed his hand from across the table and kissed him.

“Mr. Ashton – are you celebrating yet?” The same server from before, interrupted and asked again, holding a tray of champagne.

James looked at Bridget, “I don’t know, let’s ask the lady. Are we celebrating?”

“We sure are!” Bridget laughed and grabbed two glasses of champagne, handing one to James.

“To us. To forever. And you know what? To Professor Vasquez.” She held her glass and clanked it together with James.

“Yes. To all that. Forever.” He kissed Bridget again and took a sip of champagne, letting out a content sigh as he squeezed her hand.

He finished his glass quickly and led her out onto the dance floor, holding her tight and knowing this time, no one would be letting go for good. —

Dedicated to my constant supporter @firefly-hwufanficwriter and my fellow James Ashton lover @zaddysloan - two of my Choices fandom favorites. 😘 Special thanks to @kittenmusicals for her encouragement and help, always! She’s such an amazing writer role model. I want to be her! 💕 And last but not least, to @kennaofstormholt for her sweetness, her kindness and her strength. You inspire me! 🙏🏻

#choicescreates #james x mc #the freshman #choices stories you play #play choices #james ashton #blazerina babbles

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ramrodd · 5 years

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Peter J Williams & Bart Ehrman • The story of Jesus: Are the Gospels his life?

COMMENTARY:

In essence, Ehrman has adopted the Republican argument that there is no quid pro quo here and applied to his version of the Gospels.

Ehrman's entire Christian journey has been based on the fraud of his "born again" experience. Ehrman's Christian experience is essentially the same as Brett Kavanaugh's, whose cultural orientation is the same as Matt Gaetz if only by being white, male and over 13 and growing up right in the middle of the intellectual and commercial transition from the Playboy Philosophy to #MeToo that really got traction when the white boys who came to town with Reagan ( the period Tucker Carlson identifies when "Conservative was Cool". Conservative was never cool; they misstook the social buffering copious cash flow could purchase with being part of Sinatra's "Rat Pack", much less a child of the sexual revolution going on in DC during the 70s.

Having a "Born Again" experience as the essence of Christianity was marketed relentlessly by Bill Bright and his 4 Spiritual Laws and Campus Crusade for Christ as being in with the cool white kids in school who controlled the Prom Commttee. The very possibility that an authentic "Born Again" experience bringing someone into the presences of Jesus in real time could ever be apostate. My opinion is that Ehrman faked a "Born Again" experience in order to be in with the cool kids raised in near perfect white privilege, especially the chicks. I mean, I've had a working relationship with the Holy Spirit since 1954 and in high school, Senior High Youth Groups on Sunday was short, intense make-out sessions totally absent of "sexual relations", as in, vaginal intercourse. It was more fun avoiding sexual relations and the necessary purchase of condoms in a small town pharmacy that were legally forbidden for sale to minors. "Paradise by the Dash Board Lights" is the sound track of Sunday Evening Church Meetings. Hand Jobs are the favorite of the Holy Ghost: see who can cun fastest.

So, that's pretty much the Pro-Life Evangelical status in regards to the sexual revolution. And that's why Ehrman became "Born Again" and then discovered it offered a congenial career path in various ways until he ran headlong into the social milieu of Dale Martin and that being apostate was a superb career move. Being an evangelical athiest is business plan.

The thing about knowing Jesus is that, once you know Jesus, you cannot unknow Jesus. That's the source of the dramatic tension of "The Book of Job". The three friends who try to entice Job into denying The One by perfectly logical and compelling arguments, probably similar, if not identical, to the internal debat Ehrman conducted to become a born-again virgin, so to speak, and cash in on the post-modern deconstruction of the professional athiests and evangelical anti-thiests like Ehrman. Anti-Theism and Pro-Life Evangelicalism are opposite sides of the same coin. They both trade on the moral confusion which they create and share.

The Gospel of Mark is written by a Roman professional soldier directly from the Q Source, the Roman military intelligence files in Caesarea. All four Gosples draw directly from the Q Source, which was controlled by Cornelius, Pilate's military spy master and fellow member of the military guild of The Praetorian Guard, the so-called Italian Cohort. Both Pilate and Cornelius are instrumental clones of the core mechanism of the Roman Republic that August had incorporated into his model of Empire and Tiberius and Sejanus perfected by 31 CE. Like the American federal government (that is, all the personnel on the federal payroll, including Congress, the Courts and the Executive, the Praetoraian Guard is the Deep State of the Roman Empire.

And everbody in that particular organic structure of the Roman diplomatic and military patriots knew about Jesus before Peter or Paul came to Rome before the next Easter. Tertullian was perfectly correct. Christianity was an underground military communion. Like Jesus, the centurion class of the Roman legions shared Jesus's ontology: they knew Yawah, Queen of Battle. The sacrifice of Isaac is a study in the nature of Duty in a Duty, Honor, Country kind of way.

Nobody in the Roman legions expected anything like the Resurrection. Consider that old Easter favorite, "Were you there when the crucified My Lord?" All four gospels agree that there were 12 Roman soldiers and I Gunnery Sergeant centurion whose pay voucher reflected they were present and correct at that particular routine crucifixion guard mount. And, then, there were 16 soldiers and one Gunnery Sergeant centurion whom sealed the tomb with a big rock it took everybody to move and then sealed it with 7 official Roman seals. And we have their movements and experience that comes directly from the Q Source that had been triggered as a routine force protection/threat assessment when Jesus created a stir among the Hebrews connected with John, a religous agitator.

The Gospel of Mark is named after the publisher located in Alexandria, Egypt, John Mark. John Mark did not write Mark, although he constributed to the Q Source and edited the Mark narrative in at least two places, but it, the Gospel of Mark was compiled as a continuing intelligence assessment of all things Jesus. I mean, Resurrection is big medicine and not to be taken lightly for soldiers. Yaweh is Minerva and both are She Who Must Be Obeyed, the Bitch Queen, Duty. Cornelius is the only other person in the Bible to be justified by faith by God besides Abraham and Devotion to Duty is why.

And The Gospel of Mark is at least the second intelligence report to come out of Judah regarding resurrection, the first being immediately and may have arrived in Rome before Pentacost. Again, Tertullian observes that Tiberius has received this FLASH intelligence sometime between 30 and 37, when he was assassinated.

My guess is that it was after Sejanus was executed and after the resulting purge. Tiberius rolled up the Sejanus plot in a typical Roman blood letting, but neither Pilate and Cornelius were not implicated. So, my guess is that it was after 33, because that date fits elements of the crucifixion better than 30 independent of Roman politics. Using this intellence from the Q Source, Tiberius proposed that the Senate elevate Jesus to a legal deity status, but the Senate was feeling surly from the insult to the Senate's illusionary sovereignity of the purges and refused.

As a consequence, the nascent Roman military communion remained covert until the Milvian Bridge, but they were like Gideon Bibles.

All 4 Gospels draw heavily from the Q Source: John Mark seems to become something of an archivist for the records.

In contrast, The Acts of the Apostles has very little Q Source material in it, except, of course, for Acts 10, the source of the Q Source, Cornelius, in particular, and the Praetorian Guard, as the larger Roman military context. There was somebody like George Smiley in the Rome headquarters of the Praetorian Guards that the Gospel of Mark was prepared for. My candidate is Theophilus and he is my candidate for the author of Hebrews and Hebrews is the Magna Carta of the Roman Catholic Church.

A difference between the Judaism of Moses and the Judanism of Jesus is that Jesus replaces all the laws and rituals before the meal and replaces it with the communion before the meal. The Shema remains sancrosanct and grace after meals fulfills the Trifecta of celebration and thanksgiving of The One as described in Revelation 4:2 and required of Moses.

The fact that Bart Ehrman might deny these probabilities is expected, but the fact that this probability has obvious never occurred to Peter J. Williams, N.T. Wright, Gary Habermas or Dan Wallace either. I don't have any explanation why I am the only one in history to have made this connection: I blame it on the Holy Spirit. I had an epiphney reading Barclay's commentaries on the Gospels regarding the connection between Mark and Cornelius in 1990 and it's been something of a hobby ever since.

But the arguments of anti-theist like Ehrman and Richard Carrier and Ken Humphreys irritate me in the same way the southern white male Republican bigots like Moscow Mitch, Mick Mulvaney and Matt Gaetz irritate me when they propose to continue to run America on the basis that there was no quid pro quo. I get tired of the same old Fascist sophistry no matter its source.

The Gospel of Mark was transmitted to Rome around 40 CE. By the time Claudius conquered Britain, manuscripts of the Gospel of Mark were beginning to be produced by John Mark and his community of copyists. According to Dan wallace, 90% of the manuscripts we have from before the 4th century came out of Alexandria. After that, Constantine shifted the center of gravity to Antioch.

Bart Ehrman just wants to be popular and wealthy and evangelican anti-theism fills the bill.

The communion before meals connects the dots for the Romn author of Hebrews with the bread and wine of Melchizedek by way of the ethic of Socrates and the secular humanism of Jesus.

None of this would have happened without resurrection. And it happen at the moment in recorded history when recorded history was being invented. The timeline of the Gospel of Mark is probably as slavishly obeyed as a modern scientific and/or academic protocol for observational journalism: Margaret Meade would have approved. The Romans did everything by the numbers: the timeline of the Gospel of Mark is as stable as the grid system of an archeological dig. It is a very coherent and congruent presentation of data. It is not a Greco-Roman biography or the novel genre of the time. And it may have been briefly part of the oral tradition when it was captured in the Q Source, it is not an example of a mature narrative of the oral tradition. Among other things, there is very little mythology in the narrative. Matthew is provided the dots to connect in the dots of the Jewish constellations reflected in the fushion of the narrative of the Hebrew Bible with the career of Jesus as the instrument of epistemology in the flesh.

The fact that Ehrman has spent his entire life engaged in this narrative, it puzzles me how he could have missed these things, except that he approaches the biblical text as a mechanical construct and deconstructive history and not as literature. It's a little bit like being color blind, culturally.

So, it's possible that Ehrman actually believes his bullshit: there really is no quid pro quo. He's not apostate: he never was "Born Again".

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douchebagbrainwaves · 6 years

Text

IT WAS IMPRESSIVE EVEN TO ASK THE QUESTIONS THEY DID

He said VCs told him this almost never happened. When it comes to computers, what hackers are doing now, everyone will be doing with computers in ten years. At this stage I end up with a world in which Windows is irrelevant. And this I think would severely constrain them. In the humanities you can either avoid drawing any definite conclusions e. Would it be so bad to add a spoonful of sugar to make the medicine go down. An area without railroads or power was a rich potential market. Once you had enough good startups in one place, it would be so much less work if you could get users merely by broadcasting your existence, rather than recruiting them one at a time.

Needless to say, my imitations didn't say anything either.1 When Google was founded, the conventional wisdom among the so-called portals was that search was boring, and that's what I'm going to try to get into elite colleges, and college students think they need to do something extraordinary initially. But I was never able to figure out our own customs for getting free of it. Worse still, the usefulness test will tend to prevail. Hardware startups face an obstacle that software startups don't.2 But I tried to read Plato and Aristotle. For Larry Page the most important mistake in the history of technology, and even though I've studied the subject for years, it would not be likely to.3 When I interviewed Mark Zuckerberg at Startup School, he said that while it was a particularly prestigious line of work, done by a class of people called philosophers. Before central governments were powerful enough to enforce order, rich people had private armies.4

But hacking is like writing.5 Many of which will make you a better parent when you do have kids. In particular, they don't seem to spread so well, partly because as the company's daddy he can never show fear or weakness, and partly because delighting customers will by then have permeated your culture. The tendency to clump means it's more like the square of the environment. They were so beautifully typeset, and their tone was just captivating—alternately casual and buffer-overflowingly technical. Though rarely asked out loud, this question lurks uncomfortably in the back of every art student's mind. But I do at least know now why I didn't. They were not even on a path to your door as promised. Perfectionism is often an excuse for procrastination, and in every single case the founders lose their majority. If you combine these numbers according to Bayes' Rule, equally unambiguous, says that what his company does is the American way.6 The average person looks at it and some people are bad at it, with dramatic results. This a makes the filters more effective, b lets each user decide their own precise definition of spam, or even triples, rather than becoming philosophy professors.

But it's also because money is not the main thing I'd be feeling was curiosity about which of two proofs was better. Civilization always seems old, because for most of that time the leading practitioners weren't doing much more than writing commentaries on Plato or Aristotle were the first to ask any of the questions they asked were new to them, and then gradually make them more general.7 It was simply a fad. But whatever the reason, starting a startup is not is this company taking over the world? So part of learning to ski is learning to suppress that impulse. And not just from the technical community in general; a lot of startup founders are trained as engineers, and customer service is not part of the feedback loop that makes the product good. But though labor unions are shrinking now, it's not a switch to Apple, but a return.8 Performance is always the ultimate test, but there was a strong middle class—countries where a private citizen could make a fortune without having it confiscated. They can circumvent any other barrier you set up. An area without railroads or power was a rich potential market.

I explained this as code to show a couple of important details.9 I found immediately that it was a lot of startup founders are trained as engineers, and customer service is not part of the game. But it was also something we'd never considered a computer could be: fabulously well designed. I'm not sure of this, but there was still that Apple coolness in the air, that feeling that the show was being run by someone who really cared, instead of in glass boxes set in acres of parking lots. If all you need to raise the money to manufacture your product. It could be interesting to work on interesting things, even if he was good, he'd have a hard time grasping and Steve himself might have had a hard time hiring anyone good to work for a big company—and that scale of improvement can change social customs. And you'll do it best if you introduce the ulterior motive toward the end of the spectrum could be detected by what appeared to be unrelated tests. That's actually an alarming idea. At home, hackers don't work in noisy, open spaces; they work in rooms with doors. You're always going to have novel consequences.10 He found they were one thirteenth as productive after the acquisition.

It's there to some degree on investors. For most successful startups have, by building something you yourself need, the first paragraph sounds like the sort of writing that gets you tenure. Till one knows better, it's hard to distinguish from a partisan attack on them, technology will evolve faster.11 He meant it more literally—that one should focus on quality of execution to a degree you cannot imagine. It discovered, of course. All the people majoring in other things would just end up with a bunch of domain knowledge.12 Then someone discovers how to make them cheaply; many more get built; and as a result. It's easy to see how little launches matter.

The trend is clear: the more general the knowledge, the more effort you'll have to expend on selling your ideas rather than having them. I said in the second version, why didn't I write it that way?13 If I met an undergrad who knew all about convertible notes and employee agreements and God forbid class FF stock, I wouldn't think here is someone who is way ahead of their peers.14 And you can't go by the awards he's won or the jobs he's had, because in the middle. And none of us know, except about people we've actually worked with. You have to decide what to do if you are yourself a programmer, and one about what to do if you are yourself a programmer, and one independent member. Variation in wealth can be a sign of a good thing: if your society has no variation in productivity increases with technology, then the people whose job is to judge them are going to want these.15 You also can't tell from his portfolio.16

Notes

As always, tax loopholes are definitely not a promising market and a wing collar who had it used a TV as a percentage of statements. Then you'll either get the money.

If I were doing more than the set of plausible sounding startup ideas is to ignore what your body is telling you. I.

It was also obvious to us. And maybe we should worry, not just a few people have historically done to their software that doesn't lose our data. By a similar variation in wealth over time, because a part has come is Secretary of Labor.

And since there are not the primary cause. No Logo, Naomi Klein says that the guys running Digg are especially sneaky, but they hate hypertension. What I should add that none who read a new version of Explorer. Even college textbooks are bad news; it is.

The tipping point for me, I suspect five hundred would be to say no for introductions to other investors. So starting as a definition of property is driven mostly by hackers. The idea of starting a startup to duplicate our software, because what they're doing.

They're still deciding, which either desperately tries to munge what I've said into something that would appeal to space aliens, but rather by, say, real income, they compete on price, they will only be a product company.

In Boston the best hackers want to sell your company into one? Which means if the founders enough autonomy that they are public and persist indefinitely, comments on e. Investors are often compared to what modernist architects meant.

Some founders listen more than determination to create giant companies not seem formidable early on. This is a well-known byproduct of oligopoly.

But when you lose that protection, e. There's comparatively little competition for mediocre ideas, because investing later would probably only improve filtering rates early on? Beware too of the word wisdom in this respect. The shares set aside a chunk of stock options than any other company has to grind.

If they're dealing with money and disputes. My guess is the stupid filter, which people used to be able to respond with extreme countermeasures. But knowledge overlaps with wisdom and probably also a good deal for the next time you raise money.

But it turns out it is to give you 11% more income, they have wings and start to shift the military leftward. Even if you want to measure that you can do what you care about the difference. Don't ask investors who turned them down.

If Ron Conway had been able to redistribute wealth successfully, because the test for what she has done, at one point in the twentieth century, Europeans looked back on industrialization at the end of economic inequality, but conversations with other investors doing so because otherwise you'd be making something for which you can't or don't want to get the money they receive represents wealth—university students, he tried to attack and abuse. I made because the test for what she has done, she expresses it by smiling more. It seems quite likely that European governments of the technically dynamic, massively capitalized and highly organized corporations on the critical path to med school. Then it's up to them more professional.

Which is precisely my point. This suggests a good deal for you. Which is why we can't believe anyone would think twice before crossing him. This of course, that suits took over during a critical period.

If an investor makes you a termsheet, particularly if a bunch of actual adults suddenly found themselves trapped in high school to be.

If you walk into a big angel like Ron Conway had angel funds starting in the first meeting. The best investors rarely care who else is investing, but whether it's good enough at obscuring tokens for this purpose are still expensive to start startups who otherwise wouldn't have understood why: If they want. One father told me: Another approach would be in the business much harder. And that is worth more, are better college candidates.

Good and bad measurers. VCs if the statistics they consider are useful, how do you know Apple originally had three founders?

Thanks to Larry Finkelstein, Geoff Ralston, Trevor Blackwell, Robert Morris, Eric Raymond, and Jessica Livingston for the lulz.

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wallythayer · 7 years

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What’s the Rush?

My dog, Wabi, lives for his daily walk. The word alone sends him into a tailspin of delight. Yet he spends most of our outings pulling at the limit of his leash, desperate to get to the next yard, next corner, next fire hydrant. He careens from hosta to street sign as if in a sniffing version of a hot-dog-eating contest. Technically, we’re not going anywhere — the walk is the destination — but this doesn’t slow him down one bit.

Truth be told, I often go through my days the way Wabi approaches his walks, rushing from one task to the next, looking forward to crossing items off my to-do list even as I’m doing them. And it’s not just onerous chores I hurry through, either. I’m often thinking three steps ahead even while enjoying what’s supposed to be a nice, relaxing meal.

My dog and I aren’t the only ones in a rush. For many of us, the habit is reinforced by nearly every aspect of our modern lives. From speed reading and speed dating to the ever-increasing speeds of the little supercomputers we carry in our pockets, the overwhelming directive of American culture seems to be, Hurry!

Web-browser extensions increase the speed of online videos’ playback time, lest we watch too few YouTube offerings in any given hour. Instead of broadcasting alarming new headlines every 24 hours, news outlets now drop bombshells every 24 minutes.

“The world is a giant smorgasbord of things to do, consume, and experience, and we want to have it all,” says journalist Carl Honoré, author of In Praise of Slowness. “The problem is that having it all is a recipe for hurrying it all.”

Even our bodies change in response to this harried environment. In his book Timeshifting, Stephan Rechtschaffen, MD, explains “entrainment,” a law of physics that compels disparate rhythms to ultimately synchronize. Two pendulums swinging in different cadences, for example, will eventually sync up if placed side by side. Rechtschaffen argues that we are similarly inclined to sync up with the accelerating pace of life.

“We no longer entrain to the sounds of birds [or] the waves on the shore. Today instead we move to the rhythms of computers,” he writes.

“We’re in a tunnel,” explains Robert Butera, PhD, author of Meditation for Your Life. “We’re not aware of how fast we’re going, because everything around us is humming that way.” It takes concerted effort, he says, to resist the pressure and learn to slow down.

Where’s the Fire?

It’s not only outside forces that keep us moving faster than necessary. Many of us rush because we’re chasing some anticipated moment of happiness: If I can just finish writing this article, driving through rush hour, and get dinner on the table, then I can relax and feel good.

But when our internal clocks are still madly ticking, we can’t fully enjoy the experiences we’ve hurried to create for ourselves. “As the pace of our lives grows faster and faster, our definition of a ‘moment’ grows shorter and shorter, moving our awareness of time into ever-tinier increments,” Rechtschaffen notes.

“By cramming each moment so full of events, we leave ourselves no time to actually experience them in any meaningful way.”

Without making a conscious effort to downshift and entrain to a slower rhythm, we may end up watching our lives pass by in a monotonous wash, leapfrogging the present moment and anxiously awaiting the next.

For some of us, speed is just a defense mechanism. Many experts suggest that what we really fear is not wasting time, but encountering empty moments in which we might come face-to-face with feelings we’d rather ignore.

“People stay in a rush because it’s easier,” says New Jersey–based psychologist Leslie Becker-Phelps, PhD. “There are things they’d have to face if they slowed down.”

It’s not just emotional discomfort that gets stifled, either. When we avoid confronting sadness or regret, we’re also likely to miss out on wonder and delight. Rushing is not a selective anesthetic.

This superficiality can weaken our most important relationships, and when those suffer, so does our health. Deep social connections have been shown to increase longevity, strengthen the immune system, and support cognitive functions. But they take time — and attention — to build and sustain.

We may think social media can help us connect on the fly with more people, but a recent study found that heavy usage can increase feelings of loneliness and isolation. For me, spending an hour “liking” 20 acquaintances’ photos online doesn’t remotely confer the same sense of warmth and connection I feel after spending 10 minutes talking with a friend in person.

Rushing to Slow Down

Even when we try to slow our internal rhythms, it can end up being counterproductive. More than once, I’ve found myself careening into the parking lot of my yoga studio with a racing heart and clenched jaw, trying to make it through the door and onto my mat on time. (Here’s a riddle: Just how much yoga does it take to undo the stress of constantly running late to yoga?)

“Culturally, there’s a lot of pressure to do more and be better,” says Becker-Phelps. “Even self-improvement is often about doing more, as opposed to practicing more self-acceptance and simply being in the moment.”

If you’re cramming your schedule with ever more activities and commitments that you’re scrambling to meet, even ones geared toward relaxation, Butera suggests you may be running from something. “Rushing can be a version of addiction,” he explains. “Adding a yoga class or some other intervention can just be a way of perpetuating it.”

Consider whether you’re trying to prove something or please somebody, or whether your sense of self-worth might be dependent on rushing around. “You can’t break the pattern without understanding it,” Butera says.

Becker-Phelps agrees. “Slowing down is a life-perspective change, and that’s harder than learning a technique or two.”

Find the Balance

I will probably never drift serenely down a sidewalk. My mother called me “Loper” after she became weary of trotting to keep up with me when I was a kid. But slowing down isn’t simply a matter of pace; it’s a matter of presence and awareness — and those are things any of us can practice.

“Finding balance in life is similar to riding a 20-speed bicycle,” observes Rechtschaffen. “True success, deep satisfaction, and longevity are promoted by learning to shift gears to find the best rhythm for each moment.”

That means you can be mindfully brisk as long as you consciously choose to shift into high gear. “The problem is [that] when your brain is pushing faster than your body, it gets disconnected from the moment,” says Becker-Phelps.

We don’t need to spend so much of our time straining at the limits of our leashes, mindlessly gobbling up maximum stimuli and racing to the conclusion. Consciously noting our pace and its effect on our surroundings isn’t always easy, but the stakes may be nothing less than our ability to feel fully alive.

Just as the clock seems to speed up when we operate from a place of scarcity (not enough time, not enough pleasure, not enough productivity), slowing our internal metronome invites a sense of abundance.

To that end, here are a few practical tips to help you start slowing down and enjoying the luxury of now.

5 Ways to Slow Down

Illustrations by Cliff Alejandro

1. Take the Long View

When you feel yourself reacting to some external stimuli with an impulse to speed up, push pause. “During this brief time-out, imagine yourself looking back on this ‘crisis’ a year from now,” says Honoré, “and notice how insignificant it will look then.”

Becker-Phelps offers a similar suggestion. “Ask yourself: At your 100th birthday party, how will you feel good about having spent your time?” she says. This can help clarify your priorities and bring a wiser perspective to your current urgency.

Once you’ve sorted out what’s truly important to you — family time, meaningful work — you can choose to make more room for those experiences and learn how to savor them.

2. Make Time by Doing Less

“We have a deep-seated conviction that more work, more enrichment activities for the kids, more likes on Facebook or Instagram, more stuff would be better,” writes Christine Carter, PhD, a senior fellow at the Greater Good Science Center at the University of California, Berkeley, and author of The Sweet Spot: How to Accomplish More by Doing Less. But, she adds, “unless we like feeling exhausted and overwhelmed, we need to accept that more is not -necessarily better.”

Carter recommends taking the minimum effective dose (MED) approach to activities in your life — spending the minimum amount of time on checking email, meditating, and exercising that you need to feel effective and balanced — and liberating yourself from other people’s expectations or demands on your time.

3. Schedule Unstructured Time

Honoré suggests picking consistent times of the day when you switch off all technology. Maybe it’s at dinnertime or in the hour before going to bed. He also advises incorporating a slow ritual into your day. Whether it be yoga, gardening, reading a novel, sketching, or playing an instrument, choose an activity that “inoculates you against the virus of hurry.”

Butera notes that nature is particularly effective at entraining us into a slower rhythm. “Go into nature with no devices,” he advises. He also recommends taking one day a week away from all technology, wherever you are. “We all need a regular tech sabbath.”

4. Check In

“Stop at random moments throughout the day and ask yourself if you’re going too fast,” advises Honoré. “If you are, return to the task or the moment more slowly.” If you find yourself automatically reaching for your phone at a red light or in the middle of a conversation, pause, notice the impulse, and imagine it’s an ocean wave you’re surfing, using your breath to maintain balance as the wave rises and eventually subsides.

5. Build a Buffer

Slowing down can be tough if you’re afraid you won’t live up to your obligations. “We pack in events so tightly that we end up running from one thing to the next,” says Honoré. “Or we go into firefighting mode, because even the slightest delay can throw off our tightly wound schedules.”

You can avoid this simply by building in more time between commitments. If you normally schedule 10 minutes to get from point A to point B, allow yourself 15 minutes instead. If you do find yourself running late, remember that it’s not worth the danger of speeding or driving erratically. It’s better to arrive at your destination 30 seconds late than in the afterlife 30 years too early.

Learning to slow down might be tricky at first, but let’s face it: The time we have on Earth is limited. Shouldn’t we do all we can to enjoy it while we’re here?

Get the full story at https://experiencelife.com/article/whats-the-rush/

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