My husband and I have something of a recurring conversation when we get the girls to sleep each night. As we respond to emails and text threads, go over schedules and appointments, and scroll through our phones, it feels like we keep coming back around to the same questions. “How can we slow down? Where can we push back against a frenzied pace of life? How can we live slower and better?”
He is a pharmacist. Day in and day out, he doses and dispenses remedies. He sees firsthand how we are a medicated people. As a population, we don’t sleep well, we don’t often eat well, we’re stressed, and on many days we simply don’t feel fully ourselves. I know there are a myriad of factors to blame for this: genetics, underlying disease, environmental toxins, life circumstances, etc. Many of these factors necessitate pharmaceuticals. But I have to wonder if some of our unrest and imbalance stems from our frantic, over-stimulated lifestyles. Kind of like the ones we find ourselves living in the center of suburbia.
We talk a lot about wanting to hop off the crazy train—the high-speed engine racing mindlessly toward the next house, car, promotion, season, vacation, etc. The train so many of us unknowingly board that is ultimately bound for nowhere. We want to teach the girls a better way. We want to be grounded, intentional, and healthy people. But how?
It seems living a centered life used to happen a little more naturally. We all know life was simpler and people were more in tune with nature (and possibly with each other and themselves?) a hundred years ago. But I think it can be said life was less frantic even a decade ago.
When our firstborn was a baby and even a toddler, we would take turns rocking her to sleep in a chair in her darkened room. This was before smartphones, so we always played Baby Einstein lullabies or “Pachelbel’s Canon” (her favorite) in the background. Without fail, whichever one of us was rocking her to sleep fell asleep, too. We were undoubtedly physically exhausted from the demands of two very young children in that season. But I have to wonder if we didn’t have more restful minds (and spirits) during that time when classical music rather than a Netflix show or social media was the last thing on our mind before bed. We rarely give our brains that kind of rest these days.
This week I listened to Bob Goff interview Ian Cron. Cron is a priest, therapist, and writer most recently known for his work on the Enneagram. But in the conversation he has with Goff, he doesn’t talk about the Enneagram or personalities. He speaks about how we can be healthier people simply by paying attention to our lives.
“Most people live unconsciously most of the time. They’re just on autopilot with no curiosity.”
Cron says one of the healthiest things we can do is to become what he calls “situationally aware” people. This sounds strange at first, but as a therapist, he says there are five questions he likes to ask people to consider when they’re feeling uncentered, stressed, or depressed:
- What have you eaten today?
- How much sleep have you gotten the last two nights?
- How much water have you had lately?
- How much exercise have you been getting?
- How much time have you spent on technology?
I’m not a therapist, but as a mom I might add to this:
- How are your friendships? Have you had any good conversations or experienced any community lately?
- When is the last time you were outside?
Anyone who does after school pickup knows you can pretty much discern what kind of mood your child is in within thirty seconds of them entering the car. I can almost immediately identify when one of the girls is hungry. Almost as easily, I can tell if they haven’t had outdoor recess or if they spent most of their day on technology. Asking a few questions and then responding to the answer accordingly is what helps to reset or center my kids.
But I don’t think about this list of basic human needs when it comes to my adult self. I’m not very “situationally aware” as Cron would say. When we sit on the couch in the evenings we know we’re tired and a little stressed and out of sorts. We just don’t often sit still and quiet long enough to think about why.
What have I been eating/drinking? How much technology/media have I consumed today? Have I had a good conversation with a real person lately? When was the last time I spent a few minutes outside?
It seems so obvious that it surely can’t be relevant to living a deep-spirited life in 2019. Or can it?
Maybe answering some super simple questions is the first step—the signpost—toward feeling more centered and less like a helpless passenger on a train we don’t want to ride.
“May God, our very own God, continue to be with us just as he was with our ancestors—may he never give up and walk out on us.
May he keep us centered and devoted to him, following the life path he has cleared, watching the signposts, walking at the pace and rhythms he laid down for our ancestors.”
1 Kings 8:57-58, The Message
May it be so.
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