Slow is Smooth, Smooth is Fast

The plum trees in my mom’s backyard bloom. Insects sing around the white blossoms. The air is doused in flowery perfume. It’s February. It feels too early for this. The breeze provides relief to the heat which, for me, is already too much. I like winter. I like cooler temperatures. Still, there’s something about sunshine days, happy bees, energetic wasps, softly cooing mourning doves. I sit outside with the sun burning the tops of my bare feet. Windchimes strike out unrecorded melodies. My mom kneels at the edge of one of the beds and pulls out weeds.  

I’m taking a break from being at my computer. But I’m still thinking in rounds about a work project, my own research, and something I’d recently heard while on a call.

The moderator had said, “I’ll leave you all with a quote a friend told me the other day. He said, ‘Slow is smooth, smooth is fast.’” The moderator had then linked the quote to the day’s topic and wrapped up the call.

Afterwards, I look online for the source, thinking it sounds like a Zen Koen or something from Sun Tzu. It doesn’t take long to find and I’m not that far off with Sun Tzu. It’s a U.S. Navy SEAL mantra and a phrase well known within the special operations world.

Trying to trace it back to one person, I dead end; the originator, if there was one single person, is unknown. The site I’m scanning explains that the mantra is about being deliberate, prioritizing quality over speed, and following the recommendation to keep refining.

All things I support in my work and in my life.   

So many things move too fast. Work is spit out without thought of quality. We’re fed the message that we must never stop moving, hustling, pulling ourselves up continuously by our bootstraps in order to survive. We’re encouraged to monetize everything. To find an angle. To maximize. To sell. The emphasis is so often on rapid production, instant gratification, and an unceasing factory line of ideas that in the drive to keep up and to stay relevant the power of refining gets lost.

There’s a time for moving fast. Hustling has its place. As does hard work. As does pulling oneself up.  

But other things have value too. Slow things. Deliberate and precise things. Reworked and revised things. Taking pride in one’s work. Making sure a thing is done well. Stillness. Silence. Research. Thought. Thoughtfulness. 

It’s important, at times, to pause. To stop completely. To wait. To let something (like creativity) run through its cycles, like the seasons, from seed to first growth to harvest to death.

Let the land breathe for a moment before planting again.

I think of another saying, maybe my dad said it, maybe someone else, “If you’re going to do a thing, do it well.” Which then leads me to recall Mary Poppin’s saying to the Banks’ children, “Our first game is called, ‘Well begun is half done,’” as they start the game of cleaning their room. (Apparently that phrase was used by Aristotle.) (Another site reflects upon Horace saying, “He who would begun has half done. Dare to be wise; begin.” Which is more good advice.)   

Sitting and watching the wind move loose things into a dance, the hawk circling, the shadows changing places, with the I shoulds running circles in my head—I should be working on this other thing. I should get up. I should be doing something else, being, acting some other way. I should write that down, remember this, finish that. I should, I should—I think of yet another quote. One I’d seen on a tea bag’s tag. It’s by Lao Tzu who said, “Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished.”

Casting a glance at the budded trees and the grinning daffodils, I wonder if Nature has forgotten to pay attention to that as it’s hurrying spring upon us.

My mom, who loves spring and the surprises that a garden reveals when the seasons change, hopes that a freeze won’t come through and kill all the growth. It has happened before when Winter wanted to remind us all that its time shouldn’t be up and put Spring back in its place.

The forecast seems to support my mom’s hope, but predictions can be tricky. Time alone will tell.

In an interview with Austin Butler who played the titular role in the recent Elvis movie, he tells of a moment during filming when he’d been part of a discussion about the reception the film might receive when the director Baz Luhrmann said, “You can never predict the outcome, but what we can do is relish the process.”  

My mom is relishing the process of spring.

I’m relishing the deliberate, precise, beautiful nature of my work.

I move my feet out of the sun and wipe a sheen of sweat off my cheeks. A bluejay lands on one of the plum trees and lets out its riotous call. It’s relishing whatever it is that bluejays relish; the sound of its own voice perhaps or the return call of a rival jay.   

Mantras are not one size fits all situations. But they can certainly be used to add depth to life and remind of what’s important for a particular moment of time. Thinking about that, I draw all the words together in my head, put them in a line, move them around. I lean into slowness, into deep work, into the lessons there are to be learned. A squirrel climbs onto the bird feeder and reaches for the seed. The birds wait for it to leave.

Begin.

Relish the process.

Dare to be wise.

Slow is smooth, smooth is fast.

Finish what you start.