Maintaining Your Center

One of the principal challenges of modern life is keeping up. The other principal challenge is remaining calm and centered even while working to keep up with the way things are changing. The rate at which things are changing has been increasing exponentially for generations. For thousands of years, the only way for humans to go from place to place was to walk. It took a long time to domesticate horses and to use them for transportation, farming, hunting, and warfare. It also took a very long time to develop the wind technologies used for sailing vessels. In the nineteenth century, the rate of change started accelerating.

Although it isn’t immediately self-evident, humanity went from horses and wind to steam, electricity, and oil very quickly. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, people traveled by foot, by horseback, horse- or ox-drawn wagons, or by steam-powered rail. By the end of the nineteenth century, people traveled by diesel-powered rail, automobiles, and airplanes. If we had a time machine that could bring someone from the early nineteenth-century here and put him or her into a modern car zipping down a freeway, we’d have a very freaked-out passenger. Someone from the early nineteenth century would have no way to comprehend traveling at freeway speeds, let alone air travel between continents.

It would also work the other way. If we were suddenly transported back in time to the early nineteenth century, we would have a difficult time adjusting to the pace of life before electricity. The evening’s entertainment would have been sitting on the porch in a rocker watching the light fade as the sun went down. As a species, humans are good at adapting—as long as they don’t have to adapt too quickly. While the rate of change was already accelerating, World War II caused a seismic shift. When my father left for New Guinea in late 1942, the caissons in his artillery unit were pulled by mules. By the end of the war, they were all mechanized. The wars in Korea and Vietnam had the same kind of accelerating influence on all things technological.

Depending on how old you are, you may or may not be aware of the changes that have occurred since your birth. I was 7 or 8 years old before I saw my first TV. It was a big box with a small round screen. The images were in two colors: dark green and light green. It could receive one station that was on the air from about 5 p.m. until 8 p.m. In those days, radio was still the principal form of in-home entertainment, broadcasting both comedies and dramas (primarily crime and “cowboy” shows). I was 13 when my family got its first TV. It was still a big box, the picture was larger and basically square (4X3, for those of use familiar with video sizes), and it had tubes that could be checked at a local drug store and replaced when necessary. If you’re old enough, you remember the days when automobiles had clutches and stick-shifts and gasoline was less than 30 cents a gallon.

By 1970, the rate of change had accelerated so much that Alvin Toffler said we were experiencing future shock. In 1980, Toffler published The Third Wave. One of the things Toffler predicted in that book was that secretaries would be replaced by computers. One of my colleagues and I had been conducting workshops for secretarial groups, and the resistance to the idea was fierce. The transition from typewriters to computers was by no means smooth. One of the secretaries I knew had her typewriter removed and a computer installed without warning. She was told that she would be trained in two weeks. Nothing was said about the meanwhile…. Another secretary I had known for years quit her job when computers were installed and then discovered that she was unable to find a job where computers weren’t required. Future shock happens….

One of the common sayings these days is that, if you want to know how your iPad works, ask a second grader. One of the advantages of being young is that your habits haven’t been well-established, so you have fewer routines that need to change as you adapt to new technologies. Those of us who saw the second grade come and go a long time ago need a way to maintain a sense of remaining centered while adapting to the changing requirements of our environment. The principal reason monasteries and hermitages were established was to provide those who wanted to focus on their spirituality with a place conducive to contemplation, meditation, and prayer. The desire to escape the hustle and bustle of daily life is a common theme in poetry:

Now that we are in the twenty-first century, “things” are changing more quickly that ever, driven by innovations in technology. Home computers have been increasing in power and complexity, and a lot of us are struggling to figure out how to take advantage of “the cloud.” We will soon have “self-driving” automobiles and watches that will watch us as much as we watch them. The question we face now is similar to the one implied by Wordsworth: how can we retain our sense of being centered while the world changes rapidly around us.

Meditation and Mindfulness have long been recommended for those who desire to live a more contemplative life. The martial arts, including Tai Chi and QiGong, have also been used to help practitioners maintain a balanced center in spite of a hectic life. Karate, Tai Chi, and QiGong are all forms of “moving meditation.” In karate, “kata” (a series of specific movements) promote mindfulness, whereas sparing does not. The lead character in the TV show NCIS uses woodworking to return to center following a difficult day of crime-solving. I have known people who use knitting, crocheting, and quilting in the same way. Some kinds of music and dance promote mindfulness. Nature, including gardening, works for some people but not others. The same is true for walking and running, which work for some people but not for others. Prayer also works for some people but not for others. Depending on where you live, it is still possible, of course, to sit in a rocker on your porch while watching the sun go down.

The trick is to find something that works for you. Herbert Benson’s The Relaxation Response provides a guide to a technique clinically proven to improve the health of practitioners. And there’s no doubt about it: finding time on a daily basis to do nothing but seek and appreciate being centered will improve your sense of well-being, even if you spend your days fighting crime. One of the things that happens when you find something you can practice on a daily or almost-daily basis is that the state of being “in tune” will become habitual. Even the process of seeking something that really works for you can itself become something that works for you when you recognize that the process is not only the journey, but also the destination and that if you seek, you will find.