A Hare in Tortoise Clothes

Sometimes to go fast, you need to slow down.

Friday afternoon. I had poured a cup of room-temperature coffee into my flower mug- the one with a black dog painted on it that reminds me of my own. The coffee had sat in the carafe getting cold for 5, 6 hours, so I stuck it in the microwave and turned it on.

The bright mug circled in the microwave as I knocked lightly on the open door to the home office belonging to Jeremiah — my boyfriend of one zillion years. Natural afternoon light filtered in casting itself over the fig tree that sits next to Jeremiah’s desk.

“I need to go over a list of pros and cons,” I told him, “so that I convince myself to go get my allergy shot.”

I listed the pros:

• I’ll get to allergy shot maintenance faster. (After 45 visits, I don’t have to go as often.)
• I love percentages, and this improves one. If I get my shot, I’m 3% closer to maintenance.

I listed the cons.

• It makes me tired. (I should preface this by saying I talked with my doctor and I’m an outlier. Allergy shots don’t make everyone tired, but my immune system goes ham for those allergens.)
• I have to drive there and then spend thirty minutes there. An hour of my day, gone.
• I can’t go outside after I get my shots or go into the garden since I’m to avoid extra allergens.

I finished up my self-lecture before the microwave binged, “I should just go.”

Jeremiah doesn’t abide by nonsense. I thought he’d wave me out the door telling me to skedaddle down to the clinic.

Instead, this is what he said:

“Sometimes to go fast, you have to go slow.”

Um. What?

“Don’t go,” was what he said, “you’re excited to reach maintenance now, but you’re so tired from the shots that your weekend is shot. Eventually, you’ll never want to go at all.”

When we were traveling in our RV, we constantly wanted to race to the next destination. The next bucket list item. Other than when we visited our friends in California for six days right when we hit the road, we rarely spent more than two nights anywhere for the first nine months or so on the road.

And it was exhausting.

It was July 2019, somewhere in Michigan heading towards Canada when we both just crashed. The bugs were more intense in Michigan than anywhere we had been so far. Walking outside to take the dog out was like fighting an onslaught of tiny transformers feeding on our skin. They waited outside our door, humming their buggy songs, knowing that we’d have to emerge sooner or later, and our skin had the welts and hives to prove it. Since there was no use being outside, we couldn’t work on our rig, couldn’t slip into a lake, or even take an evening walk. On top of that, Jeremiah had injured his back which was progressively worsening, and couldn’t really walk much at all.

So that’s when we said, what are we doing? We have to slow down.

Slow down we did. Well, almost. First, we raced from mosquito-laden Michigan to Dallas in one week. We were still learning that “slow down” part. We still are.

But we got to Dallas by early August and we put our feet up. I swam in a pool every day for six weeks at an RV park. We found restaurants we could visit. Jeremiah started physical therapy. (Spoiler, it wasn’t enough and after a 360 ALIF back surgery he is part titanium terminator.) Was it bucket list stuff? Not really. And it was off-script. But it was what we needed. Eventually, we were ready to go again, but we never scampered across the US quite as quickly as we had those first nine months.

We had been so fixed on the next destination that we had run ourselves ragged and realized the toll it took on us.

Life is like that a lot. Trying to find the next best thing, get to the next destination, all without realizing how hard you’re pushing yourself because you promise yourself that just around the corner is the next best thing.

People do it in many aspects of their life. Sacrifice their health, their mental health, their time — -just so they can be the creator who publishes four books before they’re thirty (another spoiler, not me) or build a sell a company in three years, or see the next landmark before the cold weather arrives.

So I didn’t go get my allergy shot on Friday. And on Friday afternoon, when I’d be trying to push through allergy fog and avoid pollen, I instead harvested a few pounds of purple potatoes from my garden, because instead of rushing forward, I took the time to slow down.

Sometimes to go fast, you have to go slow, or you’ll never reach your destination.