Recently our stake president, Pres. Chapman, said, “If it seems like time is speeding up, you’re right. It is. Change in happening at a faster rate than ever before.”
Sometimes it feels like life is moving so quickly around me that my head is in a whirl and I can hardly reach out and let my mind grasp onto one thing.
For this reason, I am working on s-l-o-w-i-n-g d-o-w-n. Now, mind you, I am not a whirling dervish of energy; just the opposite. But even when my body moves slowly, my mind can be spinning at a thousand miles an hour. Something I learned a few years ago from a cello teacher taught me a great life lesson. One week I had worked very hard preparing for a lesson, practicing a difficult piece I had been assigned over and over again. At the lesson, I played it for him, making some mistakes, because, hey, it was difficult! He heard me play and then said, “Well, that’s fine, but I can tell you didn’t study it.” WHAT???!!!! I was furious! I wanted to kick him! He was right there within reach and I could have kicked him. I went home from that lesson in tears, but over the next weeks, it slowly began to dawn on me that his definition of “study” was entirely different from mine. I came to understand that he meant that I should examine each note, each interval, the relationship between the notes. If I came to a part that gave me difficulty, I should stop and analyze why it was a problem and figure out how to solve it. Oh. I get it now.
I am trying to learn how to apply this principle in the rest of my life. I may have only ten minutes to read the scriptures, but instead of racing through a couple of chapters, I read each verse very slowly, one word at a time. I think about each word. I may look up a word in the dictionary, even if I know what it means, because I usually find a definition that helps me understand the word even more completely. I usually don’t make it through a whole verse, but in those same ten minutes, the Spirit teaches me in ways that I have never experienced before. So what if it takes me twenty years to get through the Book of Mormon? I don’t have a deadline, and I am learning so much.
I am trying to do the same thing with my prayers. I would sound silly if I said a family prayer like this, but in my personal prayers I say one word at a time, thinking about what I am trying to say. I’m sure Heavenly Father understands, and I find that my prayers are much more sincere.
My next step is trying to slow down my eating: one bite at a time and savoring each bite. This seems to be much more difficult, maybe because it is usually in a group situation and I can’t focus as easily. So if you’re at a meal with me, help me remember, ok?
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