Living Takes Time, Thinking Big Takes Time

"Most men pursue pleasure with such breathless haste that they hurry past it." - Soren Kierkegaard

Full weeks what with writing the book, sharing time with my 2.08 close confidants ;-), working on kick-starting the Silicon Valley Renaissance (truly I only half-jest) which requires a lot of deep hanging out time in the field offline, prayer, and living.

Yet I'd never cut out my morning tea time. I set the tone of the day with my early morning ritual in the backyard where I meditate and contemplate over a steaming cup of aged earl grey with bergamot or perhaps a pomegrante oolong or maybe an orange spice moonlight white tea.

"You honor life with tea, and the only way you can do this is by making the effort to stop time," says Alexandra Stoddard in the beautiful book, Tea Celebrations: The Way to Serenity. I unearthed the book - a total delightful surprise - buried under layers of other books at the lovely and welcoming Leigh's Favorite Books (reviews/Google map) practically across the street from the historic Del Monte building (yeah, there were really orchards and fruit growing in Silicon Valley once).

Reading the June 2006 issue of More magazine about former Autodesk CEO Carol Bartz handing the reins over ("Bartz, 57, and her board were worried that her heir apparent, Carl Bass, would leave Autodesk if he didn't get the chance to run it.") I pondered why Americans find it so difficult to slow down. The article states:

Bartz's biggest challenge may be the one she has now - slowing down, even if it's from 120 miles per hour to 115, as she puts it. "I don't have experience" in downshifting, she says. "I've never done it."

That's an understatement: "Recovering from a mastectomy and trans flap surgery, to rebuild the breast with abdominal tissue, was brutal. She just took four weeks off, then worked full-time through seven months of chemotherapy treatments. "It's a blur now," she says, "but the chemo part was hell."

..."Please tell people that when the doctor says it takes six weeks to recover, you shouldn't go back work after four," she says. "Missing work for those two weeks wouldn't have killed anybody."

A caption picturing Bartz standing in her Atherton, California garden accompanies the story, "The World According to Bartz," says she "wants to spend more time with her hands in the soil."

I've heard an executive coach say, Slow down to go fast. She said most of her clients, like Bartz, had no idea how to do that. They weren't opposed to the idea at all. They just weren't sure how.

I've found slowing down itself, alone, isn't the answer. I used to race around at probably 90 mph (to Bartz' 120) back in the heyday: back when I didn't have time for a wedding because I was working two dot-com jobs because I just had to have my stock options vest in the first company.

There are plenty of miserable folks puttering around at a zombie pace. (One day I'll share the research that links obesity and sexual dissatification - hint: eating fast, and eating without enjoyment translates over to your love life too.) It's more about savoring, being vitally present every moment, every step of the way. Sometimes that's not so slow, rather it's quite energetic, seemingly fast on the outside - but wholly without friction, and flowing ease.

So this is my favorite passage from the treasure I found at Leigh's:

"Living," as wise Eleanor Brown once said, "takes time." Even though she died January 30, 1991, a little over a week before her 101st birthday, Mrs. Brown is alive in my heart. I never saw her rushed or anxious. She was an interior designer working for the most prominent families in America, and there were many times her clients tried to put undue pressure on her and her staff. This was unacceptable to her. She valued everything about life and didn't want discord or manipulation.

At four o'clock every weekday afternoon, a maid served tea to Mrs. Brown and to all the employees. Cookies, too. No matter how frantic we were, or upset or stressed, we all stopped working. Tea was a command performance with Mrs. Brown. This was a time for sharing. I switched my attitude instantly. She'd engage me with questions. "What was the most beautiful thing you saw today? Why?" Or, "Don't you feel we get too fussy in our decorations?" Or, "Did you know that our client Mrs. Harris is home every afternoon when her daughters return from school, and they have tea together?"

I learned that teaching is in the act, in the performance. What you do, you are. Our four o'clock teas at the firm were not four-hour Japanese tea ceremonies, but they did happen every day. Probably they lasted twenty minutes, which is one hundred minutes a week. This adds up. In a year, you have had 5,200 minutes of tea, or a little over 86 hours. Think of what you and someone else can share in that time.

Mrs. Brown was an extremely successful businesswoman. Why did she instigate this ceremony in 1922, when she founded her firm, and serve tea for over sixty years, every afternoon, to her employees? It forced us to stop whatever we were doing and pause. Over tea we dreamed up solutions to design projects. We tended to pair up. A younger assistant could spend some one-on-one time with her boss or a senior designer. Of all the habits I've acquired from Mrs. Brown, my adopting the tea ceremony at four each afternoon at Alexandra Stoddard Incorporated is one for which I'm especially grateful. This break refreshes us and clears our heads.

When my assistant, Elisabeth, and I sit alone having tea, we talk about our work in broad, speculative terms. We talk about the big picture and let go of the pressing problems for a time. Sitting at a desk isn't the only time when ideas surface; in fact, it is much more likely that something new springs to mind in moments of peace and leisure.

I have several busy friends who enjoy coming over for tea after work before going home to their families. The more frenzied we become, the more important it is to take undiluted time to be with a friend...Tea for two is a special opportunity to catch up and talk in shorthand and get to the marrow of life. There are far too few occasions when two people are alone, face-to-face, in communion with one another. Each meeting should be sacrosant, even if it is only for twenty minutes. Just being together, sometimes even without a whole lot of conversation, binds us with invisible threads of grace and love. - from Tea Celebrations: The Way to Serenity by Alexandra Stoddard

image Flickr photo by Rick Takagi

Comments

[Marilyn]

I smiled at your comment about orchards in Silicon Valley. My grandparents moved to Sunnyvale when my father began high school--he spent his adolescence there. He still marvels today over his parents turning down an opportunity to buy an orchard there, given what the property would have been worth by the time Silicon Valley came into being. Tea in the afternoon is a lovely ritual, and one I've engaged in at various workplaces over the years. Not as a group, but solo...it's a nice moment to take for oneself.

[panasianbiz]

I am definitely someone who believes in "thinking big." Far too many people put endless limitations and obstacles in their own paths to success. Successful people are usually those who do not see obstacles as roadblocks but as opportunities to grow and achieve.