Your choice of animal crossing (but not the video game of the same name)
Springing into spring at a creature's pace
This week, I’ve been thinking about the speed of things. Of communication. Of life. Of … window cleaning. These thoughts were prompted by news from the Window Cleaning World Cup (what do you mean you don’t follow it too?) that there’s a new world record for the fastest cleaning of three standard office windows. Terry ‘Turbo’ Burrows held onto his title as champion in the men’s category, with his daughter Aliscia Burrows taking the top spot in the women’s (surely it could be a gender-neutral sport?). Their respective times (15.07 and 17.08 seconds) sound impressive. But when I watched the video of the record-breaking window washing taking place, it seemed so … slow? I couldn’t figure out why at first.
It is speedy squeegeeing (and about a million times faster than my own attempts as part of a non-televised spring clean this weekend), so why did I think it seemed unremarkable? One reason is that it’s simply someone doing what they do and doing it well. So it is fast, but because it’s also slick it brings with it an ease, an anti-frantic matter-of-factness that makes it look slower than it actually is.
I looked up ‘speed’ in my Dictionary of Word Origins, and it agreed:
Did you already know that the expression meant ‘more haste equals less speed’ rather than ‘more of the haste please, less of the speed’? I didn’t. I really had to think about it for a long time, with a metaphorical lightbulb very slowly blinking over my head as I thought back to the times my mum used to say it when my sisters and I were dashing around the house trying to find shoes/socks/hairbands etc. before getting out the door.
After that detour of thought, I realised that the other reason the window cleaning feat seemed a little leisurely is that I’m so used to seeing (and creating) social media content that is sped up, or with a soundtrack, or composed of lots of little clips mashed together (or all three). Whereas the window washing is us watching something unfolding in real time. Which is really refreshing in the online human world and totally the norm in the natural world. There’s that famous quote (from Taoist philosophy) that says:
Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished.
The truth in that saying was clear this week, with the equinox, as the quiet work of winter showed up in the blossom and buds and bulbs of spring.
It’s a thought I want to take with me, as Sunday turns to Monday, into the rush of the week. And it’s my offering to you, too. Via a sort of wildlife-vid pick ‘n’ mix: three films from my phone of three creatures at imagined pedestrian crossings, moving slowly and steadily to get where they’re going. I took the video of the cow in January, the swan in Feb, and the bee earlier this March.
In the rush of life today, with our attention spans getting shorter and shorter, these three videos actually make for quite a difficult watch. The cow has no sense of my impatience to carry on my journey up the steps; the swan makes it nearly out of shot, only to decide to stop for a scratch/preen; and the bee walks almost all the way along before a complete about turn (two steps forward, one step back).
But I encourage you to stick with the discomfort, if you feel it, of a different pace and choose one of these lovely furry/feathery friends as your partner in slowness (or should that be speediness) this week – embody its unhurried nature and see if you still get to where you want to go.
p.s. I’ve left the sound on all the vids because it adds to that ‘in real time’ feeling, but I should explain that the swan video is near a tennis court, so that’s the noise you can hear in the background on that one.