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Too Fast to Be, or to Do

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The one overarching word that sums up my experience in Nanjing; convenient. A convenience that has its roots in speed. The Real Fast Life. Everything, everywhere, as soon as you want it. In essence; haste, hurry  and “fast-ness” (to butcher a word) attaches to everything one does. Quick, quicker and quickest are the adjectives we associated with any service we want. 

Waiting for a Didi longer than 1 minute is really not on. Waiting, dare I say, for the metro for 5 minutes can be feel like a sludge; time to get out my phone. Waiting for a Taobao order for longer than 1 night; O No, sigh, woe is me, how will I live without my custom-bamboo-finger massager that connects via Bluetooth to an App that controls LED lights and sends voice messages to remind me that I have not used it in the last 30 seconds? 

We live in world rooted in Fastness. 

Shakespeare, through Macbeth, spoke of how “Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow, Creeps in this petty pace from day to day, To the last syllable of recorded time”. I wonder, if the bard was writing today, if he would change it to “ToNow and ToNow and ToNow, creep into your petty post from swipe to swipe to the last syllable of recorded Instachat” .

For us: the fastness of life is our greatest benefit, and yet our greatest tragedy. 

Nanjing, and China, are no different from the global world in which we live. I see it in my dear South Africa; we have shortened our wait times, and also shortened our expectations. We create an anticipation of need for every small thing we buy, and in doing so we create an expectation of instant growth of character and life. Life is a Now, not a journey, not a joy, but a list that needs to be ticked. 

Jonathan Haidt has written brilliantly in The Anxious Generation as to how devices are rewiring our brains, in particular those of teenagers (if you have, or work, with teenagers, this has to be one of most important books one can read!). Yet the effects of this rewiring have impacted us all; our fast living and instant attention spans have real consequences to the meaning and values of our lives. Integrity of character and thought cannot be developed speedily. 

As a teacher of literature, I worry that reading; one of the great gifts given to humanity in guiding reflection of self and empathy; is one of the easiest casualties of our fast-paced life. Our recent visit to the Nanjing library was so impressive; a great monument to knowledge; thousands of books spread over numerous floors with places to read and study all at our fingertips. Yet, the same irony was present, as many, myself included, indulged in looking at a phone too many times (what WeChat, what news?), instead of the great reportative of human knowledge available.

If, like me, you are entering into your 5th decade of life, a reflection on the amount of books one could still read is utterly sobering. If I, by grace, live another 45 years, and read a book a week every year, I would be able to read just over 2000 books. And the chances of getting through 51 books a year itself is an impossible thought. 

I have no doubt, though, that I do read thousands of words a week on my device. Yet this is shallow, lacking in substance, not building character, and it leads to comparisons, anxiety and much discontentment. 

To read stories, from classics to great fantastical fiction, is far better than any social media or breaking news post! Yet, even when am reading, I find myself subconsciously reaching for a device, a notification, something that my brain reminds me is a Now. 

Conceivably, apart from the neglect of depth in our minds, our fast life is always leading to a lack of meaningful relationships and conversation. 

Again, our devices loom large; heading out for dinner and sitting opposite your love and yet you both end up on your phone is so easy to picture. 

Yet, perhaps in the speed of life we expect, we also lack the willingness to invest time and energy into forming the deeper, slower bounds of friendship. We meet friends; in two days we expect family; we go on a dating app, and end up with hollow and horrid shadows of true love. 

In wanting the Now, we struggle to take the time and energy to nurture these relationships. Family and friendship through the years struggle against the call to do now, be now, live now. 

So perhaps the challenge we need to place on ourselves is to allow the fast life to work in our favour. We have convenience, we have instant food, deliveries, transport, communication, contact and holidays; this surely gives us free time that is unequalled in the history of the world. 

Think of our some of the great projects of history; our ancestors building walls in Nanjing and Istanbul and Scotland. 

These ancestors giving their all to life and working for food, heart, home and every morsel. We truly are the realisation of their dreams in having all they could hope for at our hands. Yet, we seem to squander it. 

Thus, we must start to use this free time to our benefit, not that of the fast social media phone life.  I know I am being the hypocrite in writing these words; yet, as a New Year dawns, perhaps we can bring some better commitments. Ones we can hold fast to. 

And so much of it is linked to our devices; if we can master them, and the fast world they promise, we can perhaps benefit from life in the fast lane while keeping our minds, souls and hearts in the slow drip of reality. 

So, every day, I will use the fastness at my disposable; I will place my order on Taobao, get a lift home with Didi, have Hema and Meituan deliver to my door, speak to my friends and family across the globe, and then, when at home at night, I will place my phone in a box, away from my hands, and just read.  An old-school solution for a new problem; a deliberate “fast” out of the fast-paced life. 

An out of sight and out of mind solution to bring back one’s sight and mind to the important over the urgent. I think that, if I can be properly offline for just 2 hours, the Now will not be so urgent, the Fast will be allowed to slow, and this deeper “Fast” will allow a slowness to return, in a small way, to the rhythm of life. 

So, as we quickly begin a new year, we still need to ask with urgency:  To Do, or to Be. That is the question for our generation. 

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