“Hurry kills joy, gratitude, and appreciation; people in a rush don’t have time to enter the goodness of the moment.” - John Mark Comer
I heard a story about a tense garden conflict between turtles and snails. One day a turtle wanders away from home and is attacked by a gang of snails who leave him bloody and badly beaten. When his turtle friends find him, they’re distraught and frantic to help. “OMG!” they scream! “What happened to you!?” Stunned and disoriented, the turtle says, “I don’t know…It All Happened So Fast!”
How often have we heard that from families and patients about an illness? Yet as clinicians, we wonder– how can that be? We know that there are not-so-subtle symptoms they must have noticed along the way, correct?
Perhaps they truly did not take the time to notice. I’ve seen that often it’s not easy for people, myself included, to “be” in their bodies.
“How can that be?” you might ask. We are always in our bodies, and it’s not like we can take a vacation from our bodies.
When people speak about being “in your body,” they often refer to a connected awareness between the body and the mind. This connection allows our bodies to communicate information to us before things get crazy and out of control and we are in a bind of some sort that takes us to the ER or our provider’s office.
It all happens so fast when our sense of control primarily depends on external factors instead of internal awareness. We get so wrapped up and distracted by everything around us that we miss out on the signals our bodies send us to rest, eat, and take care of a minor issue that could quickly be resolved with some simple self-care.
I fall into this too. It would take me a few minutes to remember if you were to ask me how my Easter Sunday was right now; it went by so fast. I noticed that I was getting wrapped up in all the external things, even with a good prayer and meditation practice. So, I added a relatively easy practice, and it’s helping. I could describe my Mother’s Day to you in detail now.
It did not take scaling a mountain and finding some cave to hide in to meditate, either.
I just added some mindfulness to my morning routine. I get into the shower, and instead of thinking about the next thing I had to do, I focused on how the water felt, the feel of the loofa on my skin, and how nice it feels to rub my scalp when washing my hair.
Do I get distracted? Sure. So, I remind myself – “I’m washing my left leg now.” It draws my attention to how my body feels there. I get back into my body.
It’s something called mindfulness. Get onto Google and look it up; you’ll find many small helpful practices that are easy to work into your day.
Life does seem to happen so fast! It does not have to appear to feel that way.
It’s Nurse’s Week and Hospital Week! There is so much going on. With the next event, try noticing how the food tastes on your tongue, deeply feel the texture of a gift on your fingertips, or how the music sounds.
In a week or two, we might not reflect on this special week and say, “It all happened so fast!”
I thank you for reading, be blessed this day!
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