Slow Down, People!

Per my January New Year's resolutions, I'm trying to read (and finish) one book per month.  Typically, I'm reading four or five books at a time and never really immerse myself in them ... or typically finish them, for that matter.

So my change of spirit this year has to do with adopting a change in my perspective on life.  I'm trying to embrace what I think of as my childhood "pace of life."  Back in the 1970s, things were slower and people took time to enjoy things, pace themselves.  

Check out anyone's blog list of "What I'm Reading Now" and you'll know what I'm talking about.  The blog list always has four or five books and sometimes ten or fifteen.  I'm sorry ... but you just can't digest and enjoy that many books at once.  And, how much thought does someone take in selecting just the right book when they are reading a bookstore number of books at once?

My March book is Barack Obama's "Dreams from My Father."  So far, I'm enjoying getting to know the young Barack (He wrote the book in the early to mid 1990s.) and I can see already that he is a thoughtful and very intelligent person.  I looking forward to seeing how his life story unfolds. 

Here's a question for us ... Why don't we feel like we can slow down?  As middle class overachievers, it is so hard for us to admit that we are only reading one book at a time.  Or that we're letting our kids play ball just for fun ... or that we're just as happy with our old van as we would be with a new hybrid ... or that life without a cell phone might be pretty nice.  There's a fine line in our culture between slowing down a little - being perfectly content with less - and being labeled a "loser" by others.  And, we seem to think that "peer pressure" goes away after high school.  :)