Fast-Forward

The thought occurred to me one evening after I had had a conference with a student. She dashed into my office looking as if she was pursued by or pursuing demons. While I assembled the materials that we needed to review, she pulled out her cell phone and made a hurried call to give someone instructions for dinner. She was attentive during the conference, but I had a vague feeling that part of her mind was already engaged in what she had to do after she left my office. After we ended the conference, she thanked me for my time – but she was nearly out the door when she said this. I imagine that, by the time I had put on my coat to make my own departure, she was halfway across campus.

Perhaps it is because I am getting older. Perhaps it is because, as a teacher, have more contact than most older folks do with frenetic youngsters. Or perhaps it is because I live in an area that is influenced by the frantic urban culture of New York City. But it seems to me that our whole society is rocketing through life like a jet-propelled car on a highway with no speed limits.

Certainly, the old saying about stopping to smell the roses is more often quoted than observed. Most people don’t even seem to see the roses, let alone stop to smell them. Indeed, I wonder if some people have time to even notice that there are roses. I know that, when I do try to match the pace of most people around me, my days are a blur. When I finally stop running at the end of the day, my mind says, “What? Where did that day go? Wasn’t I just getting up?”

When I was younger, the older folks (i.e., the people in my life who were pushing thirty), used to say, “Haste makes waste.” I don’t hear that much anymore. Haste is a way of life. The moment people are forced to interrupt their headlong dash to wherever, they become irritable. Nobody is crankier than a 21st-century man or woman who is forced to stand in line, or wait for something. Post the speed limit at 50, and people will drive 60; post it at 60, and they’ll do 70.

We must, it seems, always be in motion. It doesn’t much matter where we’re going, really, as long as we’re going. And if our bodies can’t be in motion, our mouths must. Some people are apparently constitutionally incapable of riding in a car or on an airplane, or sitting in a movie theater before the show starts, without flapping their gums. And, just as the going may have no specific destination, the talking may have no specific purpose. It exists for its own sake.

On top of all this, we have a phenomenon called multitasking. Nothing symbolizes the high value we place on being able to do more than one thing at a given time than does the cell phone. It enables us to combine going and talking, so that now we can be going nowhere in particular talking about nothing of importance, both at the same time. I imagine what the world looks like from above through a telescopic lens – a giant discotheque with people milling around aimlessly in some kind of frantic dance, all the while talking into cell phones.

Much has been written about the decline of reading, with most of the responsibility being placed on television. However, possibly one main reason why people don’t read much is that reading requires sitting still. It’s a slow, almost entirely motionless process, so alien to a creature who is always going that it seems unnatural. The only speed required in reading is alacrity of mind – and that is not nearly as highly valued today as are other forms of speed.

One might argue that TV slows us down because, after a day of dashing about, we put our feet up and relax. But the couch potato stretched out on the sofa is a myth. Most people do something else while watching TV, or they have equipment that allows them to fast-forward anything that seems to drag.

Fast-forward: Now there’s a term that epitomizes the 21st-century lifestyle. Well, we know what a movie looks like when it’s run fast-forward – blurred, frantic, pointless, incoherent, and silly. Is that any way to live?

Rich Turner