A Scooter Life – A Slow Life
Scooter Poetry
Cartoonist and ‘thinker Michael Leunig writes the prayer –
Dear God. We pray for another way of being:
another way of knowing. Across the difficult terrain
of our existence we have attempted to build
a highway & in so doing have lost our footpath.
God lead us to our footpath: lead us there where
in simplicity we may move at the speed of natural
creatures & feel the earth’s love beneath our feet.
Lead us there where step-by-step we may feel
the movement of creation in our hearts. And lead
us there where side-by-side we may feel the embrace
of the common soul. Nothing can be loved
at speed. God lead us to the slow path; to the joyous
insights of the pilgrim; another way of knowing:
another way of being. Amen (Michael Leunig
When I Talk to You, Harper Collins, 2004)
Could this be a kind of “scooterist prayer”? Could part of the attraction of buying a scooter for many, be an answer to the call of ‘the slow’? Could purchasing a scooter for some be their attempt to move into the slow lane of life, to say to the world, “sure drive on past, zoom off on your way to life, but I am taking the slow way, I will smell the flowers and hear the waves beating against the sandy shore”?
In his fantastic book “In Praise of Slowness”, Carl Honore believes that we are living on the edge of exhaustion. He says our pace of life is spinning out of control & that most of us live in an accelerated culture of our own creation. Honore recommends we consider the facts–we spend 40% less time with our children than we did in 1960s; the average American spends 72 minutes every day behind the wheel of a car, & that adults across the west currently devote a meager half hour per week to making love. If we’re honest, most of us are caught in the same vortex. Honore says, these days the whole world is time sick. In a survey of five thousand UK workers, 60% said they would not be using their full vacation entitlement in 2003. In Japan they even have a word for ‘death by overwork’–karoshi. In 2001 the Japanese government officially reported 143 karoshi victims.
I wonder how we can connect with people in genuine relationships when we move fast. I wonder how we can know ourselves well when we go too fast to be able to stop and reflect on where we have been, where we are going and who is with us on the journey. In fact, as Leunig advises in his prayer, nothing can be loved at speed.
For a while I was searching for a 250cc GTS i.e. Vespa, one of the core reasons was that it got me ‘there’ faster, I could ride on the freeway, keep up with the traffic. Of recent days I have been reconsidering this drive, this ‘need for speed’. Sure a bigger engine will be cool…but the biggest? The fastest? Maybe a 150cc or 200cc will suffice. In fact, a friend said the other day she had her 50cc up to 88km/h! It is true that we end up in a rush and hurry at times, but is that not a matter of lifestyle choice? I love leaving extra early for an appointment, taking a book, taking the long way or taking a train and having a read. I arrive early, relaxed, I can read or do some work or make a call with out that gut churning feeling of letting people down or having to speed to make the appointment, and in doing so missing the day as it speeds on past.
Missed Opportunities
No doubt there are things that are important to you. Values, morals, whatever you want to call them. So often these are the things that go amiss when you rush.
Take for example the person who is high in mercy or compassion who always like to stop and help someone in need. This person is rushing along, late for an appointment and sees a mum on the side of the road with a flat tyre and crying baby, with no sign of a mobile phone…Too busy to help. This only causes what is called cognitive dissonance, a conflict in your head between what you value and believe in and how you act and behave. If you live like this something’s gotta give!
What about someone who loves a good conversation, a deep chat. So often these type of conversations are unplanned, spontaneous and happen just as you were about to leave. When you give yourself space in life, these conversations find their way into your daily routine.
I live my life from appointment to appointment, I do life coaching for a Youth Work organization called Youth Vision. I could quite easily fit 4 or even 5 appointments into a day…at a push. Maybe if I set up ‘camp’ at a cafe and had people turn up all day one after the other and rushed them through. If I was moving about, meeting them where they were, then I would do less as I have to fit in drive time. BUT – packing appointments in like that rips me off as well as the coachee. I have no time to reflect on the conversation, no time to reflect on my own feelings and responses in relation to the last conversation nor any time to consider the next meeting and what it was we spoke about when last we met, what goals we had agreed upon and so on.
It is an illusion. It actually looks like I fit MORE into my day by rushing, but based upon some of the factors in that last paragraph, I believe I fit less in. The day become less valuable, less fruitful and less satisfying for both myself and my clients and friends. So I need to choose to pace myself, steady as she goes! Both feet up on the scooter, knees together, eyes on horizon…twist and … GO! Well that’s if you have a twist and go scooter…maybe you have a ‘release the clutch and go’!
So I have to say that my desire to purchase a scooter is indeed connected to my desire to live more slowly, to live a more simple life, closer to home and more deeply with the people around me. Yes, image, cheaper fuel, fun, and much more comes along with it, as well as being wet and cold in the winter, but I think the slow movement has got me captivated.
Time to slow down, get my bike licence, get my slow scooter and go for a ride…slowly.
More information at http://www.scootersnoop.com