TRADING IN OUR NIKES FOR SIMON & GARFUNKEL
Just do it. Nike's Slogan
Slow down, you move too fast, you've got to make the morning last. Simon and Garfunkel, Feeling Groovy (59th St. Bridge Song)
Hmmm, is it time to go retro with Simon & Garfunkel to get ourselves off the Nike high speed highway?
We have become a speed obsessed culture. Or, to coin a metaphor, a Nike culture. Nike, and its "Just do it" slogan, has become synonymous with performance and victory. It's no coincidence that the sports equipment icon takes its name from the Nike, the Greek goddess of strength, speed and victory.
Faster is by definition better, it seems. We now have a car – the Bugatti Veyron – that can reach a speed of 267 mph. France's high speed train can achieve a top speed of 575 km/h. There is a rocket plane that can blaze through the sky at 4,500 mph.
Stop and think about how many of the Olympic sports are based on being the fastest – on foot, on skates, on bicycles, on skis. Speed is big business. 215 million TV viewers watch Nascar (car racing) each season.
We have come to worship speed. So much so that we have to have laws to limit how fast we can drive. (Why the speedometer on my car goes up to 185 km/h when I'm not allowed to drive faster than 100 km/h puzzles me. But that's a debate for another day.)
The problem with this obsession with speed is that it spills over into how we live our lives. More and more our world is structured around the ability to reduce the amount of time it takes us to do things.
Computers process information in milliseconds. It's not enough to have fast food restaurants. We have to have drive-through windows to speed up the process of getting our hands on that food. We bank at ATMs or online to avoid waiting in lines at the bank.
In theory, all these time saving devices are designed to give us more time to enjoy life. The problem is we've got to the point where we can't slow down. We've rewired our brains to do things faster and we can't shut off that impulse. All this speed, speed, speed is cranking up the RPMs on our stress meters.
In response to stress, our body releases a flood of stress hormones which rouses our body for emergency action. The heart beats faster, muscles tighten, blood pressure increases and breathing quickens. It's called the "fight-or-flight" reaction. The problem is we can't figure out what it is we're running from so we just keep on running.
Nike is the 21st century metaphor for the way we live our lives on perpetual overdrive. The frantic pace of our days is taking a huge toll on our physical and mental health. It's no coincidence that anxiety and depression are at an all time high.
It's time to trade in our Nikes for a Simon & Garfunkel ring tone on our cell phones. It may take us a bit longer to get where we're going. But we'll be able to enjoy getting there and we won't be too exhausted to enjoy the view when we arrive.
There is more to life than simply increasing its speed. Mahatma Ghandi
~ Michael Robert Dyet is the author of "Until the Deep Water Stills – An Internet-enhanced Novel" – double winner in the Reader Views Literary Awards 2009. Visit Michael's website at www.mdyetmetaphor.com or the novel online companion at www.mdyetmetaphor.com/blog.
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