The great slow down
These Lockdown’s might just be what we needed to dial down our more driven nature.
This is the latest installment from a haphazardly written collection of musings from me on the world today and how it’s changing…
My mum was telling me the other day that I was born ‘driven’. We were in the middle of a long conversation about nature vs nurture, sparked by that Netflix doc about triplets separated at birth, and we got onto the debate about family personality traits and parenting styles. She said when I was little we used to have this game called ‘pairs’, where a selection of picture cards were placed face down on the floor, and the aim of the game was to take turns to choose cards and find a pair. The person with the most pairs would win.
She was telling me that at age 3, I could already beat her. And I would also get pretty moody if I lost. “It wasn’t just that you liked winning, it was that you hated getting it wrong,” she said with a smile on her face. “I had to teach you focus on the good of what you had achieved. And to not to be such a sore loser.”
I hope she succeeded. These days, faced with a loss, I tend to be more of a ‘ok, that happened, let’s move on’ person. And still, combating perfectionism is a lesson I’ve had to keep teaching myself since entering the world of work. I say this partly to acknowledge that being ‘driven’ is some people’s natural mode, and to also introduce the idea that ‘drive’ is something that 21st century culture works very hard to nurture into us. From the earliest of ages we are told that hard work, entrepreneurship and action are the recipe for potential career success. Lean in, feel the fear, take the plunge and grab the opportunity. Always say yes to offers of work with wide eyes and an open attitude, even if you don’t quite have the capacity. Be grateful for being busy. Because it’s competitive out there.
Of course, this leads to burn out — something I certainly battled with back in my 20s. Interestingly, I’ve noticed how when drive fails us in this way, we’re encouraged to find new sources of fuel to drive action. Find your purpose. Find your why. Work out who you serve. All of this unlocks new realms of motivation, which typically spurs us back into action. Into doing. Into drive.
If our schools and mentors nurture drive into our career lives, then social media has nurtured it into our personal ones. Why walk up Mam Tor when you could hike the Annapurna circuit? Why cook at home when you could be at the newest restaurant? Why upcycle last year’s wardrobe when you could just buy a whole new one?
And if all that activity is getting too much for you, then the answer isn’t typically ‘do less’. It’s ‘get more productive’. Bullet journals, auto reminders, annual planners, eat 4 frogs, do the hard thing first. And when it slips over into anxiety, as it probably will, there’s a solution for that too: yoga nidra, meditation, adrenaline-compatible exercise. Sleeping pills. Anti-anxiety medication. Anti-depressants. Therapy.
A whole raft of life management strategies born from a sociological excess of drive.
Which might explain why for people like me, who are already pretty well stocked in the the drive department, these lockdowns come with a palpable sense of relief. As while the nature part of me is still hungry to do something challenging, the nurture side is for once sending the clear message that it is absolutely preferable right now to do very little.
For me, the result of this societal change in gear from Drive to Neutral is a sense of light freedom. The merry-go-round has slowed. The ambient noise turned down a notch.
In that quietness, I can hear my own thoughts. And I can sit deeper in myself, discovering a space where those thoughts are like raindrops on an ocean. Without getting too waylaid by what is required, or what will be productive, or how it compares to the norm.
In that deeper space, my own intrinsic drive can play. Creating new ideas, projects and words comes naturally. Without expectation. Without trying to be good. Flanking those productive moments with hours just sitting around doing very little at all. Watching telly (something I never ever do). Sleeping late. Resting.
I am conscious I have a privileged experience of these lockdowns. I am not a key worker, or a parent, or the owner of a business fighting for its future. I’m not currently living alone, fighting the deep daily challenge of enforced isolation. These lockdowns are damaging to many — including those businesses that rely on us all doing stuff.
And yet, I feel grateful for this great slowdown, knowing that given our societal addiction to action, this enforced cold turkey couldn’t have come without a pretty major intervention. And so now, we get to sit in rehab, breaking addictions to adrenaline and FOMO, and seeing what remains when those predilections are removed. It’s not comfortable. It isn’t supposed to be. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t good for us.
Which leads us to what happens when the doors are opened again. When we come out of these quiet spaces, will we automatically shift back into Drive? Foot on throttle, getting back to full speed as fast a possible? I’m not sure I want to. I’m not sure we all will.
Maybe there’s something to be said for life in a slower gear.
These posts are written in an hour and rarely edited. I’d like to write more regularly this year. This is how.
