Slow and Steady

photo credit: Gail Robinson

Slow. Steady. No race to win.

My father’s gentle voice wafts through the years as he teaches me how to drive. The car, a stick-shift Volkswagen, requires perfect timing. First gear dances with the clutch into second, synchronized limbs ease second into third, moving along, and maybe a last waltz into fourth. We save fifth gear for the open highway.

Those stick shift instructions echoed recently as I drove along a toll road—ideal directions for going forward from the once-unthinkable. Every day we better grasp the pandemic’s cost, personal and global. Each of us moves along the toll road at our own pace. Frayed, pent-up emotions unspool. Any shortcuts in private reflection will backfire. As we journey on from A to Z, we must make stops along the way. Slow—steady—pay a price. Slow—steady—pay a price. Farther—second gear—ride—pay a price. Picking up speed—steady—third gear—steady—pay a price. Longer and longer stretches without a price to pay. Finally, cruising.

“What is causing outbursts of rage on planes and in grocery checkout lines?” Francine Prose asks in her stellar article in “The Guardian.” Prose laments our “mass episode of amnesia” as so many people fast-forward into a world that, no matter how deep their denial, is forever changed. Like the toll road, there’s a price to pay for true wellbeing—restoration demands that we pay attention to our mental health. Emotions beg for tending. Like a sling supports an injured arm, a cushion of quiet and calm lifts the spirit.

Slow. Steady. No race to win.

For three years I’ve noticed the face of a neighbor, a nurse practitioner in primary care. She wears daily exhaustion well, but it shows. Listen to her. “Before covid, helping people with mental health issues probably made up 80% of my day. This is partly because access to mental health professionals is very limited. Prolonged high stress is the underlying theme of most visits every day and covid has worsened this. Ongoing high stress releases fight or flight hormones that have very negative long-term effects. We need to recognize this, talk about it, find solutions to the mental health crisis.”

Quite bizarre, any pretending that the mind doesn’t need mending. Why choose to ignore that the mind, like ankle and elbow, suffers damage? Doesn’t soul food save lives? Mowing the grass with a migraine? Nope. Jogging with pneumonia? Nope. Water skiing with the flu? Nope. But. Pandemic affect you? Me? Afraid or anxious? No way. Isolation good with you? What? Despair? Never. Wait, is the pandemic over? Dude, get out of my way.

Tennis star Naomi Osaka, twenty-three-years-old and arguably the best woman player in the world, secured her most memorable victories when she withdrew, to protect her mental health, from The French Open and Wimbledon. Naturally shy and dealing for years with depression and anxiety, Osaka chose to opt out of press conferences at the French Open. Fined $15,000 for her first day’s absence, she retired, respectfully and eloquently, from the tournament. Osaka plays tennis—her job nothing like a Broadway actress, pulpit preacher, or standup comic. “Today’s athletes aren’t willing to put a happy face on their trauma,” Jemele Hill compellingly reports in her detailed article in “The Atlantic.” And that’s not all. What if Osaka were male? How much weight does her Black/Asian heritage add to her treatment by tennis officials? Have Venus or Serena Williams endured anything similar (oh, yes)? Tayo Bero, writing in “The Guardian,” aces it: “We Are All Naomi Osaka Now.” The “stigma still associated with mental illness,” the penchant never to admit emotional struggle, wreaks havoc in a pandemic that leaves everyone, to some extent, mentally ill.

I discover daily that what Francine Prose terms a “societal nervous breakdown” presents itself aplenty. Whoa, the excuses for not wearing a mask in places where it’s required: “I didn’t remember where I am.” “I won’t be here long.” “I’ve stopped wearing one.” The general manager of an understaffed bistro regularly escorts diners out for their berating of overworked servers: “How long do you expect me to wait for my drink?” “Hope you don’t expect a tip.” A special mention, however, for interstate drivers on my recent trip. Prose describes her road trip as a “manic video game.” I’ll call mine “the numb skull derby.” Jammed in three, sometimes four lanes, cars raged in z-patterns, side to side, 80-90-plus mph. Drivers rode within inches of bumpers in front of them…blew past with outstretched arms dangling middle-fingered greetings…barely shimmied in front of the offending car and…braked. Accidents in the median apparently signaled veer to the left, veer to the right, fight, fight, fight. Mammoth vehicles crowned with bikes and luggage racks competed with even larger ones towing small yachts.

Boats. Ah, thoughts of the rowboats in Charlotte Joko Beck’s Everyday Zen rescued me. Beck asks her students to picture her rowing alone on a foggy lake, happy as can be, when out of nowhere another rowboat crashes into hers. Fury consumes Beck until, wait, guess what! “And then suddenly we notice the rowboat is empty…. Well, the anger collapses – I’ll just have to paint my boat again, that’s all.” Removing all drivers from the careening vehicles unclenches my jaw. Here I am, in the midst of these random, wild objects. Breathe, concentrate, row. “Our body has its own wisdom” (Everyday Zen). Hum. “Row, row, row your boat / gently down the stream.”

Slow. Steady. No race to win.

We absorb pandemic lessons. We will live fully, simply, clearly.

Let’s row. Like W. S. Merwin, we give “Thanks” over and over and over and “over telephones we are saying thank you / in doorways and the backs of cars.” We pop the clutch, shift gears, flow into dawn. Nina Simone rows along, “Feeling Good” because “this old world is a new world / and a bold world.”

Pump up the volume! Let’s try Bobby McFerrin’s advice and “Don’t Worry, Be Happy.” Worry? Done that. “In your life expect some trouble / when you worry you make it double.”

Why is Pharrell Williams “Happy?” Lots of reasons. “Sunshine she’s here, you can take a break.” And now? “Clap along if you feel like a room without a roof.”

Dad, I’m ready to give fifth gear a go, heading for mentally fit and soulfully free. No tolls.

Slow. Steady. No race.

No roof.

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