In 1965, a Senate subcommittee predicted the upcoming changes in technology would so revolutionize life in America, and that by 1985, Americans would be working twenty-two hour workweeks and would be able to retire at age thirty-eight. However, the result has been that instead of giving us more time, the new technologies have enabled us to fill every minute of our day as the boundaries of work and home vanished. We can work from anywhere and anytime. Whatever time is left, the list of distractions are infinite. A more accurate forecast of the future came earlier, in 1955, with Parkinson’s Law of Busyness (That’s busyness not business). The law states,
Busyness expands to fill whatever time we have. Busyness is like helium gas released in a room. The gas will expand to fill the whole room, however, as it expands, it becomes less and less dense.
The more we fill our lives with busyness, the less meaningful our lives and our relationships become. In 1938, Thornton Wilder had little idea of the changes in technology and their effect on life in the next century. What he did know was how the speed of life reduces the quality of life and our appreciation of it.
In Our Town, the focal character, Emily, dies while giving birth. She asks the Stage Manager if she can return home to relive just one more day. He reluctantly allows her. She is torn by the beauty of the ordinary moments of each day and her family’s lack of awareness of just how beautiful those moments are. She cries out to her mother, “Mama, just look at me one minute as though you really saw me… just for a moment now we’re all together. Mama, just for a moment we’re happy. Let’s look at one another.”
She stays for a short while and then cries out to the Stage Manager, “(Life) goes so fast. We don’t have time to look at one another. I didn’t realize all that was going on and never noticed. Take me back up to my grave. But first, wait! One more look.”
She stares back over her town. “Goodbye, goodbye, World. Goodbye, Grover’s Corners…Mama and Papa. Goodbye, clocks ticking…and Mama’s sunflowers. And food and coffee. And new ironed dresses and hot baths… and sleeping and waking up. Oh, Earth, you’re too wonderful for anybody to realize you.”
In tears, she looks to the Stage Manager and asks, “Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it?”
The Stage Manager sighs and says, “No. The saints and poets, maybe. They do some.”
Here is the clip from Our Town with Paul Newman as The Stage Manager.
Jesus often left his disciples, his work, his family, his friends to go off by himself and pray. He stopped moving and doing to become still and present, focusing on God, and removing all other distractions. In a world moving exponentially faster than the small town of Grover’s Corners or Jesus’ day Israel, any step away from the speed of life is one of the most important practices.
