I Refuse to Hurry
On Preserving the Qualitative Vitality of Life
My dream is to live life with no hurry. Unfortunately, it seems the world around me doesn’t think that way. Almost everyone around me seems to be squeezed by pressures that are, funnily enough, pretty much self-made.
My parents find this idea of mine traumatic, for in their view, I should have found the girl of my dreams yesterday, had kids today, and be working toward retirement starting tomorrow.
Unfortunately, my friends have fallen into this as well and are hurriedly going through the motions of marriage and parenthood — constantly juggling the demands of it while maintaining their work pressures. I can see the responsibility cracking them up.
Similarly, the workplace is always moving at a rapid pace, striving to meet aspirational sales goals to make the product a success. There is more to achieve to meet a never-ending performance loop.
And the news-cycle says the world is in perpetual self-destruct mode, combined with pollution, climate crisis, countries warring against each other, and that we are going to bomb ourselves into destruction tomorrow.
These are a few of the pressures I feel, and I am pretty sure I am not alone.
I have taken a stand: I will not be in a hurry in my life. And whatever needs to be done through me will be done through this state of mind.
When I say “without hurry,” don’t mistake me: I am not saying to be lethargic at all. It simply means I am not multitasking endlessly. It means I have no interest in taking on more responsibilities or things for the sake of it. And I question why you don’t think this way.
I don’t agree with the idea that if one does not hurry, one will miss the bus. There is no bus to miss. This is a deep belief I have learned over the years of studying Vedanta. The fact that the source of joy is within us is the greatest evidence of this.
My argument is that one should care more about the quality of life than the quantity of achievements pursued under social pressure.
The moment you start questioning why you are fundamentally pursuing something, you will realize, one way or another, that the source of that pursuit often comes from social pressure. It brings a sense of belonging among friends, and that belonging provides reassurance that one is doing what one is “supposed” to do at a certain age. But this is where one must fight the battle, find the deeper center of motivation, and truly rely on that ground.
For me, I don’t want to be in a hurry in life. And anything where I feel I must hurry to get something done generally does not find my heart or mind open to it.
What this means practically is building strong muscles to feel comfortable being uncomfortable in social situations where others are going through their own motions. This is where one needs a strong spiritual practice in private life and must bank upon it when there seems to be no strength left to hold one’s own fort as the world rushes past.
This indecent hurry that one seems to be pulled into is reason enough to lose all the qualitative vitality of life. Why? If basic needs are unmet, of course, one ought to work to address them. But beyond that, I find these hurried movements to be wasteful leakages of one’s greatness.
I would rather believe in having one goal in life and living completely in surrender to that goal. Nothing else. Nothing more. If this mindset eventually leads to worldly success or worldly failure, that is immaterial.
Can you live a life like this? Do you think you can amass willpower to this extent and live day in and day out for a single dream? If you can, then I say you have lived a life of qualitative greatness, and you do not need anyone to declare whether it is great or not.
A life surrendered to a single-pointed goal is, in my mind, the recipe for greatness. A life of managing hundreds of goals may suit the temperament of the society we live in, but to me, it feels like a qualitative failure.
The world would go on hurrying. It always had. Trains would be caught and missed. Deadlines would neatly stack in inboxes. Invitations would arrive with expectations attached. People would measure their lives in milestones, mortgage plans, and birthday candles.
But I have discovered something the world could not take from me. There was no bell ringing somewhere that I had failed to hear. No invisible conductor waving the last train away from the platform.
The sky would not collapse if I walked slowly. And so I would walk. Not defiantly. Not lazily. But deliberately.
If there was magic in life, it was not in arriving early, but rather in arriving whole. And that, I decided, was reason enough to take my time.
Reminds me of Swami Vivekananda's “Take up one idea. Make that one idea your life; dream of it; think of it; live on that idea. Let the brain, the body, muscles, nerves, every part of your body be full of that idea, and just leave every other idea alone. This is the way to success, and this is the way great spiritual giants are produced.”
I think most of us try to substitute "hurrying" for "disciplined diligence" to reach a goal, but my experience has taught me that nothing can replace the latter.