Be as Mentally Stable as a Tortoise
Today I dedicate this post to the tortoise.
To tortoises everywhere, of course, but namely to THE tortoise from the well-known and beloved children’s fable ‘The Tortoise and the Hare.’ We could learn a lot from that tortoise.
I don’t think it’s a coincidence that a few years ago I fell in love with a beautiful tortoise ornament in a shop in Belgium which sold pretty things. Of course I had to have it, and I subsequently named her Patricia after my late grandfather. (Who was Patrick, not Patricia, just in case you were wondering.)
Right now I’m looking at Patricia and realising how immensely glad I am that I have her, because she can be an eternal reminder of what I am trying to express in this post; a series of thoughts that have been floating around somewhere between the atmosphere and my brain for a little while now, but haven’t quite managed to solidify.
In response to the ideas that I have been pondering for the past ‘wee while’ as we say in Scotland, this morning I did a good old Google search to see if there were other like-minded people in the world. Turns out there are. There are many of us becoming disgruntled and unsatisfied with our fast-paced society that doesn’t cut us a break. More and more people are seeing the divide between the way we are supposed to be (according to culture and modern-day expectations) and the way we feel we want to be. The way we are supposed to be is over-achieving, multi-tasking, backwards-bending workaholics who are constantly complaining about having no time to do anything. The way we want to be is able to slow down and enjoy the here and now, without worrying about deadlines and expectations and heavy workloads. We want to rest and relax and have fun. It’s a sad truth, though, that if we do we feel guilty because of that figurative to-do list that seems to be looming over our heads.
We all know the story of The Tortoise and The Hare. They set set off on a race, and the hare taunts the tortoise because he knows that he is biologically built for speed while the poor tortoise is not. In a surprising twist of fate, the tortoise actually wins the race because the hare mistakenly believed he had all the time in the world.
We do not have all the time in the world. We may think we do, especially when we’re young, but our alloted time on earth isn’t all that long in the grand scale of things. How sad would it be to spend our entire lives ticking off one thing after another from our lists, and never actually slowing down enough to find out what is really on our hearts, the talents we have been given, the opportunities that come to us without having to chase madly after one goal, followed by another and another until we become addicted to the chaos of rushing around. We all know how fast time goes when we are rushing from one deadline to the next. We blink and before we know it we’re looking in the mirror and there are crow’s feet under our eyes and we’re thinking about mortgages.
But why do we rush around like headless chickens? To what end? To finally have an amazing job, bucket-loads of money and all the material things a person could ever wish for? A person who can’t stop going for whatever reason will never be able to truly enjoy the things they have earned, for they will always be waiting for the next big promotion, their next luxuruy cruise, their next designer-label pair of shoes.
And even those of us who aren’t chasing the best jobs going and high salaries can still fall victim to approval addiction and the ‘ought-to’s’ imposed on us, sometimes subsconsciously. We do and do and do because everyone is do-ing, and that surely must be the barometer by which success is measured these days. Heaven forbid that someone would see as as not good enough by their standards. Not having a clean-enough house, or a tidy-enough garden, or enough home-cooked dinners. Not working-out enough, not going out enough, not socialising enough. The sad thing is that for some people we will never be good enough, because they measure us by their own ridiculously high-standards.
It can be subtle. Sometimes at work I find myself almost walking around in circles, looking for something to do in order to appear busy, because heaven forbid someone should stop to see me take a breath for one second! I get scared of being reprimanded for not having a limitless supply of energy and mountains of innovative ideas. It’s a horrible trap to be caught inside, because if you live like I tend to, eventually you will burn out in one way or another. You’ve got to stop and listen to your body. You need breaks. You aren’t Wonder Woman or Superman and nobody has the right to expect you to be.
I need to get back to doing what I know is right. That means silencing my inner-critics, and sometimes outer ones too, and listening to myself more often. It means not racing around like a lunatic at work, but simply doing my best and no more, because I deserve to be happy and healthy and well-balanced and can actually only give of my best when my inner-resources are well-stocked.
It means coming home from work and shortening my to-do list to a few things. I only get a few hours in the evening. I can’t spend that time unloading the dishwasher and putting away the dishes and oops I forgot about cleaning the car and right, now that’s done I can do the hoovering and I just remembered that French lesson I’ve got to plan and that plant looks like it needs some water and my hair really needs washed and I ought to cook something really healthy so all my colleagues will be impressed at work tomorrow and oh drat it’s bedtime, but I really wanted to spend twenty minutes on my music!
One of the articles I found this morning whilst ‘Googling’ was this one: https://www.becomingminimalist.com/enjoying-life-in-the-slow-lane/. It’s very good, if you get the chance to read it. It suggests only doing three of the things from your to-do list. For example, in an evening I could cook dinner, deal with the dishes and go for a cycle. I would still have time to do some of the things that are very important to me, like working on my book or singing or having extra long cuddles with my man :-). We need to remember that it’s OK not to get everything done. Besides, we’ll never get it all done because we’ll always create new things to add to our lists.
I say it’s far better to slow down and just accept that you’ll never achieve it all, and that’s OK. We all deserve to be happy. We all deserve to stop and smell the roses, to watch the sunset and to feel the cold sea-water tickle our toes. We deserve to feel the stillness settle over us like a warm blanket as we finish off our quiet session of yoga, or as we look out of the window and watch people go by we sip our cup of tea and enjoy its flavour. Life is all about enjoying the journey, loving the people around us, and doing our best. But no more than our best.
Maybe your best will be publising a best-selling book or becoming a famous actress, or discovering a new mathematical formula, or bringing up well-behaved children, or cooking a mean roast, or always being kind. Whatever your best is is more than enough.
Remember, Slow and Steady wins the race. And Slow and Steady does not wind up in a pyschiatric word, as far as we can gather from the story. Neither does Hare, but that’s beside the point.
Be like the tortoise. Go at your own speed, and to hell with anyone else’s opinion. You don’t have all the time in the world, as Hare discovered. So make the most of the time you do have. Treat every moment as sacred, and you will find them enriched.