On Haste: All Soul's Day

Learning music is painfully slow for me. Even reading music is slow. When I can read the notes, I can play them, but I would classify myself as a really bad reader. The piano teacher yesterday stopped me: “Don’t beat yourself up for being a bad reader. You’re reading, and you’re playing: the eyes are reading the notes and the brain is sending them to the hands, only not fast enough. So slow down, until you reach the point where the eyes can read and the brain interpret and get the notes to the hands in time.” Slow down.

            This is so frustrating. Learning anything proceeds in such an incremental way, not to say a glacial pace, with what we learned yesterday so often having to be learned again today: in music, in sport, in life. And my instinct when confronted with problems is to try to solve them immediately, to restore some stability and resolve some discord. Most problems, alas, don’t solve so fast.

            The Latin proverb Festina Lente expresses the ideal balance between haste and accomplishment: “make haste slowly.” I’ve often felt that many of my troubles in life come from not having consistent energy. Either I run around full of ginger, or I collapse with fatigue. I suspect this comes of making haste until I hit a brick wall, so to speak. Since I’ve reached such an advanced age I would seem to be a slow learner, not to have worked this out years ago.

            How do we spend our years? Sometimes they seem to be spending me. Where do we go in such haste? Does it matter if it takes two years to learn this piece, or two weeks? Probably a concert pianist has nothing more important to do, but a lot of other things are claiming my attention every day. What are we called upon to be, and how much haste does this require?

            All Soul’s Day. All out of time. I think of so many I have known, beginning with my family: father, mother, brother, uncle, aunt — all when I was so young — mothers-in-law (two of them), father-in-law (only one in my time), brother-in-law, sister-in-law — quite recently, following quickly one after another — then my own husband, concluding their generation: and dear young Rachel, laid in her grave by a killer. And the extended family, cousins, colleagues and friends. And enemies, too.There is now no need of haste.

            Festina Lente. Where are you going in such haste? Slow down. Take your time. It’s all the time you have.