The treadmill has to be one of the greatest and worst inventions in the history of the world. It’s a contraption designed to make you work hard for amounts of time without getting anywhere. Yet, training on it (and its horizontally-impaired step-sibling the Stairmaster) lets me get into shape for hiking the Appalachian Trail. The work they put me through prepare me for the mountains that I get to walk up by my own pace.
It’s unfair that life’s a treadmill too. This week, I’m finding so many ironies that point out how bizarre and twisted life is. I’m reading two books at the moment (besides the school books and other ones that I’ve been working on for a while).
First, is “Spoken Here: Travels Among Threatened Languages” by Mark Abley. It’s amazing. It goes into the sociological reasons some languages are dying out while others are recovering and picking up speakers. When I struggle with Italian (almost every day) I can pick up this book and read about linguistics and the struggles those learning dying languages have. The book talks about how rapidly the number of languages in the world is decreasing.
Then I have my new guilty pleasure – “In Praise of Slow: How a Worldwide Movement is Challenging the Cult of Speed” by Carl Honoré. The book covers why slower is sometimes better. Many people would say this is the perfect book for me; it’s actually the perfect book for everyone. It’s a book on a philosophy started in Italy that makes life more enjoyable.
So where’s the irony in all of this? I’m slowly reading the book about languages dying fast while I’m rushing through the book about taking life slower. It’s terrible! I don’t want to put down the book on slowness because it’s so good. I want to savor the book about languages dying out fast and so I don’t pick it up as often. This is SO wrong.
Something even worse is that my music is this way too. On my iTunes party shuffle I just listened to “My Favorite Things” on Outkast’s CD, “The Love Below.” This remake of the Sound of Music classic puts a strong, fast, syncopated beat behind the melody line. It’s great for getting my heart racing faster and my mind spinning. Then came “A Song You Might Hear in a Wedding” by Jon McLaughlin. Probably THE most beautiful song I’ve ever heard. It’s a slow ballad with Jon playing piano and sing a love song very slow. The notes come out like honey (another irony: I read Proverbs 25:16 the other day (double irony: right after Eurochocolate)) and force the listener to hear the words and digest them. My music a perfect example of the double-life I live (and I’m assuming most people live): part of it is at a break-neck pace while the other part is a relaxed lethargy.
Italy isn’t the place where I will cure my double-life. Although, I can now at least look on it with a chuckle and get ready for the sprinting and the crawling.
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