I Go Too Fast And I Know It

You do everything at a run.

Not because you are late. You are often early. It is that there is only one speed available to you and it has been that way since you were young, and everything in your life has been built around it.

It works, mostly. You get more done before nine than most people manage all day. People rely on it. It is genuinely a good quality and you have been paid for it.

And then there is the knife.

Because you know what you are like. You know exactly what happens when you go at something with your usual attention, which is about seventy percent on the task and thirty percent on the next four things, and you know that a blade is the one object in your life that does not tolerate that arrangement.

So you avoid it. And the avoiding is not cowardice, it is an accurate assessment of your own operating speed, and it is the most self aware thing you do all week.

So let me say the first thing plainly, before anything practical.

This is a real fear and nothing here is going to treat it as excessive.

A man who knows he hurries and therefore stays away from a blade is not being dramatic. He is being correct. What follows is not going to argue that you are safer than you think, because the fear has done good work and deserves better than to be talked out of.

He that believeth shall not make haste

There is a line in Isaiah about a foundation, and the last clause of it is strange enough that people misread it.

Therefore thus saith the Lord GOD, Behold, I lay in Zion for a foundation a stone, a tried stone, a precious corner stone, a sure foundation: he that believeth shall not make haste. (Isaiah 28:16, King James Version)

He that believeth shall not make haste.

That is an odd pairing on first read. The whole verse is about something solid being laid down, a tried stone, a sure foundation, and then the human consequence of all that solidity is that a man stops hurrying.

Which tells you what hurry actually is in the text. It is not energy. It is the behavior of somebody standing on something that might not hold.

You are being offered something to stand on rather than a personality correction, and a life run at one speed has never once been the same thing as a fault in the man living it. Isaiah 28:16 puts the not hurrying on the far side of a foundation being laid, and the Holy Spirit is the one present with somebody who has been at a run since he was young.

And notice the verse does not ask him to slow down as a discipline.

Nobody is told to try harder to be calm. The stone gets laid, and the hurry stops being necessary, and the order matters enormously for a man who has been told to slow down his whole life by people who could not tell him how.

You have never once been given the thing that makes slow possible, and being told to calm down has never once been the same as being handed a foundation. The Spirit of God is the one with a man who has heard slow down from a hundred people and could not do it, and Isaiah 28:16 lays the stone first and lets the haste go second.

Slow is not a personality, it is a setting for one task

Here is the practical half, and it is one correction. Nobody is asking you to become a slower man. That is not the assignment, it would not work, and frankly the world needs what you do at the speed you do it.

What is available is much narrower: one speed setting, for one task, for about ninety seconds.

That is a completely different proposition from changing your nature, and it is the proposition that has never been put to you, because the people who tell you to slow down mean it as a description of a whole person.

And here is the thing about this particular fear that is worth naming. It was never about the knife. It is about a man at his own speed near a knife, which is a much more respectable fear and a much more accurate one. So the answer is not to trust yourself more. It is to build one narrow room where the usual speed does not operate, and ninety seconds is a small enough room to hold. Nobody has to be a different man inside it.

You were asked for ninety seconds and not for a new character, and one slow task has never once required a man to become somebody different. Isaiah 28:16 hands over a foundation rather than an instruction to be calmer, and the Holy Spirit is the one with a man who has only ever been told to slow down in general.

And here is the second half, which is a practical thing rather than a spiritual one, and it belongs in a piece about hurry. Put everything else down first. The phone, the other pan, the thing that was about to get checked. The hurry in you is not really about hand speed, it is about how many things are open at once, and a blade only needs one of them closed.

You have one thing open rather than four, and a task with nothing else running beside it has never once been the same task as the one you usually do. The Spirit of God is the one in that kitchen with a man putting his phone face down, and Isaiah 28:16 makes the steadiness a consequence of something solid rather than a feat of will.

What tonight is, with that knife

So here is the assignment, and it is deliberately small. Pick up the knife tonight, cut one thing slowly, and put it away.

Tonight. One thing. One cut is enough. Put every other thing down first. Put the board flat, keep the other hand well back, and go at a speed that would look almost comic to anybody watching, because comic is roughly the correct speed and it has never once been tried.

It may be uncomfortable, and for you the discomfort will be boredom rather than fear, which is its own thing and is survivable for ninety seconds.

You are giving one task your whole attention rather than seventy percent of it, and a comically slow cut has never once been a worse cut than a fast one. Isaiah 28:16 sets the not hurrying on top of a sure foundation, and the Holy Spirit is the one at that board with a man going slower than he has gone in years.

Then the second half, which is the one that does the work. Put it away yourself, immediately, before you do anything else. Wash it, dry it, put it in the drawer. Not on the side to deal with in a minute, because in a minute is where your whole life happens and the point of tonight is one task carried all the way to its end without another one starting on top of it.

You are finishing one thing completely, and a task carried to its end has never once taken longer than the same task left open. The Spirit of God is the one at that drawer with a man who did not start anything else first, and Isaiah 28:16 lays something solid down and the haste goes.