Who Made This Into A Race?

Nine months ago I bought a reclining bike off the Let Go app and started in on cycling thirty minutes a day.

I was inspired by my daughter who has been doing this for years. If she could do it, so could I. I’ve enjoyed it. It gives me the perfect excuse to read a book without feeling the slightest twinge of guilt.

The bike registers how many miles I’ve gone on my thirty minute daily cycles. When it hit four hundred miles, I was astonished. Wait. If I peddled only thirty minutes a day for nine months, I could travel four hundred miles across the country?

Slow. But I would get there. Anyone can do thirty minutes a day. Imagine that. A little every day and I would be four hundred miles away.

No, I don’t want to ride my bike across the country, but I do want to emulate the slowness and consistency of this example in my life. I like the idea of being like a turtle, patient and consistent. Slow and steady.

And even though I’ve never actually spoken to a turtle, or at least I have never understood their answer, I have a feeling that turtles do not experience overwhelm.

Unlike most of us humans.

Because we are on the other side. The rush rush rush side of life. Like the rabbit in Alice in Wonderland who is continually looking at his watch saying “I’m late, I’m late, I’m late!”

My mom will be ninety-three in February. Whenever I call her, the first thing she tells me is how late she was getting up so that she didn’t eat breakfast on time, or the bed wasn’t made yet, or she hadn’t yet walked the hallways for her exercise.

I call her around eight in the morning. There is a whole day in front of her. On most days the only time she needs to be somewhere is lunch which begins at 11:00 and ends at 1:00. Plenty of time.

Lately, she has noticed herself rushing around like that and declaring that she is late like the rabbit, and asks me, “I wonder why I have to rush so much, I don’t have anything I have to do?”

Well, Mom, we are all like this is some way. It’s a habit.

That’s why we need to learn how to say no, as much—if not more—than saying yes. Otherwise, we rush, rush, rush through life having no time to pause and contemplate.

In Aesop’s fable, the tortoise beats the hare. Did you think that was a story? Well, it turns out in actual turtle and rabbit races the turtle almost always wins.

Why is that?

Because the turtle is focused, it pays attention to where it is going. It is patient and consistent.

The rabbit is distracted.

In most of the videos I watched of these races, the rabbit stops and looks at the turtle going by. Sometimes the rabbit goes back to the finish line or hops over the divider. The rabbit doesn’t win because he is not focused on where he is going.

Just like us, most of the time.

The amazing poet, Mary Oliver passed away a few days ago. She wrote this poem, which sums it up perfectly.

When it’s over, I want to say all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.

When it’s over, I don’t want to wonder
if I have made of my life something particular, and real.
I don’t want to find myself sighing and frightened,
or full of argument.

I don’t want to end up simply having visited this world.

Let’s not just visit. Let’s live life, one patient, calm, consistent, beautiful moment at a time, like a turtle.