There is more to life than increasing its speed
177 | Colombo, Sri Lanka | No dust settles when our monkey mind manages us
A few nights ago I couldn’t sleep and was full of sickness.
It may have been heatstroke or maybe the hostel fans that blow warmth from one bed to the next. Either way, I woke at dawn and felt as though I never went to bed, so I packed and tried to pedal off. Exhausted, my bicycle was much heavier than usual—so much more cumbersome. Were the hills hillier, too? — the sun was hotter overhead. After just fifteen kilometres I found a guest house with air conditioning and a double bed.
I lay on that bed for twenty-four hours unmoving, neither awake nor asleep, dancing the dozy tightrope between the conscious and the unconscious, nodding into awareness, rolling over to check my phone — 2 pm! — and nodding back into a deep-blue slumber as if, like a fishing weight, I’d sunk to the silent ocean floor far below the restless, feverish storm in my head. Sprawled, I was lightly chilled by an air conditioning unit that dripped in the corner.
slow down
Feeling a little sick ties us to the ground and makes us slow down. Sickness often arrives when we’ve been running for too long or been ‘burning the candle at both ends’.
Being sick pumps the brakes on our ever-faster life, which naturally collects momentum and, left unchecked, gathers responsibilities, to-dos, invitations and notifications. When we stop being mindful of how we spend our time, we become busier and less present. No dust settles when our monkey mind manages us.
Slowing down, whether forced or not, reminds us that, as Gandhi put it, “There is more to life than increasing its speed.”
Looking back, perhaps I rushed through Europe.
I had told myself I was racing against winter. In a way, I was: I met an apocalyptic hail storm as I crossed from Macedonia to Albania. High in a mountain pass with my gloves soaked and cool water pouring down the back of my neck, I swore I’d rather be hot and dry than cold and wet.
Well, I avoided winter and now I’m hot and wet (with sweat). But I’m happy because I can escape the midday brutality every ten kilometres by sipping fresh watermelon juice topped with vanilla ice cream or with a coconut split for me at the roadside. Suncream, too, is cheap: I apply factor fifty and then watch it drip, as if repulsed by my forearms, onto the tops of my panniers. I relish my cold shower every evening.
avoiding myself
As I rushed through Europe, I believed I was avoiding winter. Instead, I was avoiding spending time with myself. Slowing down leaves us exposed to introspective assault.
When cycling, I’m occupied; there is traffic to deal with, adorable children with tiny hands waving, signs to translate. Off the bike, I eat and sleep. I find time to meet people, read and write. When rushing, I never had blank afternoons with nothing to do.
The speed with which I crossed Europe contrasts starkly with the six weeks I’ve cycled around Sri Lanka.
I have been, as Laurie Lee put it, ‘fat with time’: I spent a day wandering the tea plantations of Nuwara Eliya, which wrinkle the mountains (it’s been only 170 years since the first tea tree was planted here). Long days blurred together in Hiriketiya. Time snuck past while I chatted, read, ate, and took more coffee than any responsible doctor would advise. Sri Lanka has taken the wind from my sails in a good way. After all, the wind was blown out from an unhealthy place of ‘needing to make progress.’ — I have discovered I needn’t.
pausing & appreciating
While sick with the headache, I escaped my air conditioned sanitarium and found refuge under the familiar red sign of a Pizza Hut. Some people need paracetamol, but I need margarita when unwell.
It was a Sri Lankan girl’s birthday (Monica, I discovered), and a live band played music. After a series of Neil Diamond covers, they began with Happy Birthday — the international classic — sung in English.
How wonderful! I thought. Then, as soon as the song began, I watched in horror as Monica blew out the candles, not waiting for the end.
In the UK, everyone sings Happy Birthday four times, then the candles are blown, and there is lots of cheering, hip-hip-hoorays, and cake cutting. But Monica did not wait — was she impatient? She just blew out the candles and began cutting. I watched on, bewildered. Monica had cut up the cake by the second verse. Blasphemy, I thought. Quickly, she took a square of cake and carried it from mouth to mouth, first to the oldest, the grandmother, who bit into it. Monica and her grandmother kissed cheeks left-right, then she went to the mother, then the father, each taking a bite, giving two kisses, and so on.
I shook myself and realised that I was watching a beautiful familial scene. It was radiant in its innocence. In the UK, it’s all about Me, the Birthday Boy. Sing to me (praise me) and then I will cut the cake and then I will eat it, and you will photograph Me.
In Sri Lanka, the cake is cut quickly, and the celebration is carried out with each guest, with pictures taken and kisses shared. Everyone participates. Only at the end, after all of the tiny cousins, did Monica take a bite.
So there I sat (with heatstroke, I later determined) watching this celebration and realising I’d just glimpsed another culture. Admittedly it was not the ‘authentic’ Sinhalese culture as written in Lonely Planet (Pizza Hut, Happy Birthday in English). But whatever do we mean by ‘authentic’ — the celebration was fresh and joyous. It was a family sharing love in celebration with their daughter. It represented westernisation and localisation: an embrace of cultures. There was joy there, as much as I have seen anywhere.
And it’s a moment I would have missed had I not slowed down.
Live well,
Hector