The Problem with Urgency

Here’s how it happened to me.

I was seized by the desire to knit a lace shawl for my sister-in-law.

Don’t ask why; it just “happened.”  As these things do.

I assured myself it wouldn’t take long.  I downloaded the pattern, discussed color choices with my yarn shop owner, drove to the shop to pick up the yarn.  Energized by the prospect of something new amid the general “sameness” of my days, I brought my bag of yarns home, cast on my first stitches, and for a few days of rewarding work — a half hour or so before dinner — I had no reason to look back on my decision — or, for that matter, to the left and the right.

I was having fun.  I was diverted and fulfilled, and happy imagining my sister-in-law’s surprise and delight at the end result.  I was determined to finish, wash, block, and mail  the shawl in time for Easter.  An ambitious undertaking, but I convinced myself that I could do it.

I didn’t notice at first, because lace constructions are demanding and require close concentration, that I was no longer looking at my husband as we sat and chatted at the end of the day.

I didn’t notice when I began to add minutes to my allotted knitting time.  Then, a half hour at breakfast.  And then back at it at lunchtime.  I no longer had time for our daily walks together in the park.  But it was temporary, I persuaded myself.

Just, you know, to get this done “in time.”

The shawl began to form beneath my fingers.

What a high!  It started to take on a life of its own.  As these things do.

I admit that it began to absorb more of my attention with each passing day.  I looked forward to getting my hands on it, to pushing into the instructions with ever increasing ambition.  Not just five rows today, but maybe 8, or 10!  As the stitch count increased with each row, this meant that each row required greater focus on the details, more time — and less attention to other matters.

Inevitably I ran into snags.  Miscounted rows — a “no, no”, in a lace project.  More care and attention.

It didn’t take long for me to find fellow travelers on Ravelry.  My new knitter friends were far more interested in my challenges than was my poor husband, who’d taken refuge in reading.   My friends understood — and validated — my urgency.  They knew where I was coming from.  We bonded easily, and like the shawl, I began to grow a life of my own.  A weirdly disconnected life, but one that stroked me in the ways that mattered at the moment.

Then, it happened….

No, I didn’t run off with a cyber-knitting friend.

I rushed a row so badly that I destroyed any hope of an accurate stitch count.  In one sweep, the shawl was wrong.  Terribly wrong.

I’d been tired and my momentum had gotten a bit out of hand.

The mess was so wrong, I needed to undo my work.

To be specific, 300 stitches and four rows of intricate lace.

If you are a knitter, you feel my pain.  This is fine yarn, with tiny stitches, on a very small needle.

It took 5 days to repair the damage.  The result is that my lofty intention – to produce a shawl by Easter – has fallen by the wayside.

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As I look at the still-unfinished piece, I have to acknowledge that it is probably for the best.

Ambition…boredom…pride…expectations…

These make us do stupid and destructive things — almost always in the name of the “good.”

I am humbler, now, and wiser.  I have regained my respect for limits.  I am committed to not deceiving myself, hard as this is.

Next week, I receive my second vaccine.

Based on the responses to my last blog and conversations with thoughtful friends this week, many of us are anxious about our ability to maintain the healing, life-giving habits we have discovered this past year.

We are worried about “re-entry.”  Dreading the pressure to become over-committed (again), fragmented in too many directions (again), infected with the sense of urgency that was once so pervasive that we had ceased to recognize its toxic effects on every aspect of life (again).

The season of Lent is nearly over, but I am finding it instructive to return to its earliest teaching story.

This is the one about Jesus in the desert.  He is tempted by three “deals” Satan tosses his way:  adulation, power, and control.  All he needs do to obtain these golden rings is give over his soul.

I have come to understand that over-commitment can be the temptation to adulation.

Fragmentation, the temptation to take on and to “possess” more than we humanly can control.

And urgency, the temptation to out-run the choices we have made (or that are imposed upon us), think that we can rationalize them, by staying one step ahead of their consequences.

Of the three, I am convinced that urgency — unexamined urgency —  is the single most destructive attitude we could welcome back into our lives as a new normal dawns.  Life will offer us a bushelful of pressures, old and new, to achieve certain outcomes.  The minute we think that we can meet these on our own terms and in our own time, with no thought to collateral consequences, the fabric of life will start to unravel again.  We can be sure of it.

The minute we rush, we ruin.

Life revealed its fragility this past year, and almost overnight our choices crystalized.  Real priorities revealed themselves.  Our health.  Our core relationships.  Our capacities to go deep into silence and prayer, confront our own demons and try to heal our hidden wounds, and support others as well as we could.  Out of these experiences, imposed on us through constraint, withdrawal, and simplification, our callings became clearer.  Now, we have the potential to emerge with the humility and wisdom of having been tried, more centered and confident in what truly matters.

If this has happened to you, in any part of your life, at any level, I suggest that this is the gift to hold onto, the truth that will ease the inevitable anxiety that will come with our transitions, and the urgencies that arise under its sway.

I will finish the shawl in good time, maybe by Pentecost, maybe by my sister-in-law’s birthday in October.  Once I relax my grip and let life happen, all sorts of other delights and goodness will have a chance to emerge.  I’ll be able to look to my left and right again.  I may even set aside the yarn for a few weeks and pull out a book, rake my garden, take a long leisurely walk with my husband.