I have a phobia for clocks and calendars. Harold Lloyd in that old silent movie hanging off a giant clock dial. Calendar pages flipping like leaves in the wind each bearing away another day. Schoolmarmish spirits holding yardsticks and tapping a foot clad in a heavy brown brogan. Tick tick. Bosses looking at their watches as you come sweaty in the door. Coaches timing your run. Metronomes. Deadlines. Schedules.

I have worked as a producer and production manager, juggling multiple projects with multiple elements. I have edited TV segments and videos and recordings down to hundredths of a second. Clocks, essential. Calendars, vital. But my dream world is a meadow in midsummer where the moments, each one different, are measured by the coming and going of the wind, the passage of bees, arguments in birdsong.

Perhaps a flashbulb (Remember those?) has fired in your head. “I know what you really don’t like!” You exclaim. “You don’t like people!” Hmm. But not exactly. I actually love people in all their variety. I love them as individuals, too. But I chill toward them when they get out their stopwatches, their monthly minders.

Stonehenge. The Mayan Calendar. Astrolabes. Chronometers. Atomic Clocks. Ship’s Logs. Olympic Records. Stock tickers. Symphonies. Five year plans. Traffic lights. Air traffic controllers. Computers. The signs of our greatness. As we measure ourselves against time.

I was listening to my talented niece Simone play a tribute piece to John Williams at the American Film Institute. Simone had been with us a couple of weeks earlier hanging out at Lake Tahoe. But she had to leave to go practice for the concert. Hours and hours of repeated passages so she can portray perfection for a few moments.

Today I stood and looked over the shoulder of my painting teacher Qingxiong Ma as he demonstrated the brushstrokes for depicting trees in a landscape in the traditional Chinese style. Before today he had hours of painting lines and dots and washes and colors. There. Three trees and some rocks across a misty ravine. I will need hours, days, months before I can approximate his skill. I don’t mind. Painting is joyful and I like to see the changes I make. But here is where I begin to squirm.

Painting a graceful painting, playing the theme from Schindler’s list, even writing this ‘essay’ require savvy, practice with the medium, study. But as my partner Wil’s father used to say, “I want it right and I want it fast.” Why does it need to be fast? We love great violin playing, but we cheer fast violin playing. We are amazed by the master painter whose brush flicks out a masterpiece in minutes. We are awed by the novelist who turns out 30 tomes in fifteen years. It is not enough to get rich, we want to ‘get rich quick.’

Karl Marx, he who sussed out the true nature of capitalism and invented Communism, pointed out that bosses want us to do more work in less time because they make more profit. They pay us for six pieces and hour and challenge us to make ten. Productivity. “Making money”, as though every job was a printing press. I am valuable when someone can paste this on a website with advertising. But then the value of each of these words is measured against the number of dollars generated by the number of eyes looking at it.

In the next room my wife is dictating the notes from seeing patients today. It isn’t enough that she needs to see a new patient every fifteen to twenty minutes but she must absorb the history of each one, establish an empathetic rapport, make an accurate diagnosis, figure out the proper course of treatment, calculate proper medication, electronically schedule that person’s care over the coming weeks, and then document the whole business to a level that will pass scrutiny by personal injury lawyers looking to prove she is guilty of neglect. Of course she must do all this as fast as possible. less time, more money for all.

So how fast should I create these words? Does this have any value if it helps you think or changes your mind? Is its ‘beauty’ valuable? Is it a thing that will last, that people can share; use to connect to one another in new ways? Who cares? If it doesn’t “make money” I am ‘wasting my (and your) time’.

If you have read this far without buying anything, do you feel the current of the breeze as your wasted time flies out the window? OK, maybe your neck is stiff or your butt itches, or your mind is just tangled up in the thoughts I am laying down. Or perhaps they are fading because of their frivolousness.

There is a new industry of creating eGames that purport to keep the minds of the elderly nimble. They involve recognizing shapes, remembering number displays, sequences of vocabulary, creating spontaneous images. OK. I get it. The sensorium has all these capabilities and we need to keep using them to stay youthful in our crania. But do they really need to be done as fast as possible? Here’s the thing.

Since I have been a pup I have liked to do things as slowly as possible. Sure, there is a thrill in breezing down the highway at a fast clip. A small sense of danger can make me feel more alive. But try this: On a road where you know there is no traffic trying driving ten miles an hour for at least a mile. Open the windows. Sniff. Listen. Stop somewhere between here and there. Get out and simply experience this place that has nothing to do with your regular life.

You are stuck in traffic. Turn off the radio or player and your phone. Really look out the window. See the road, the person in the car next to you, that pond you pass every day.

At this moment Marie Kondo is a hot author. She writes books about throwing away your stuff. She claims it makes your life different. But I challenge you, and her. Don’t do it because it will make it easier to “get more done”. Think about it. That is another kind of accumulation. More tasks, more duties, more accomplishments filling up your life and your brain. Just as clear and simple and uncluttered are good, so is slow.

In The Silent Traveler In San Francisco Chiang Yee speaks of driving from Sacramento to the Bay Area. He says that speeding along the highway has the effect of ‘making everyone beside the highway smaller.’ At a distance and going by fast everything shrinks below human scale and becomes insignificant. The converse must be true. Walking at human pace through human scale places can help us feel real. Walking through the majesty of nature can humble us reminding us of the millennia that have rolled by building us and the stuff around us.

Slow down. You might discover yourself.