Letting Your Soul Catch Up With You

                  Perhaps many of you know this story, but I only heard it recently.  Here is one version:

Westerners traveling in a foreign country hired indigenous people as porters to help carry supplies. The porters went at a slower pace than the Westerners desired, so after the first two days, they pushed them to go faster. On day three of the trek, the group went twice as far as day two. Around the campfire that evening, the Westerners congratulated themselves for their leadership abilities. But on day four, the workers would not budge.

“What’s wrong?” asked the Westerner.

“We cannot go any further today,” replied the lead porter.

“Why not? Everyone appears well.”

“Yes,” he said, “but we went so quickly yesterday that we must wait here for our souls to catch up with us.”

An easy place to begin is to affirm how busy we are and our need to slow down.  We’ve heard that many times. What makes this story memorable is the spokesman’s reply.

Huston Smith said the difference between our soul and our ego is that our ego always feels a need to control our life, while our soul wants to experience it, whatever comes.

What happens when we slow down and let our soul catch up? Sometimes we become aware of an underlying sadness we’ve been evading.  As Psalm 42 says, Why are you cast down, O my soul?
And why are you disquieted within me? (Ps 42:5) The writer then recounts memories of when his life and faith seemed well-aligned and the hope that he will experience that sense of wholeness again.  But the first step to a satisfied soul is to acknowledge when it is “disquieted.”

This goes against our culture’s relentless expectation to be “happy.” But who can be “happy” all the time? Sometimes we have experienced hardship, loss, and disappointment.

I once collaborated with an academic colleague who was a psychology professor.  She had grown up in Ukraine during the Soviet era.  The government was always pressuring people to feel optimistic, despite what they were enduring and the official falsehoods that surrounded them. She grew to resent that pressure.  After coming to America, she was annoyed with popular schools of thought that encourage us to be happy all the time.  Sometimes we feel “cast down” and our soul is “disquieted.” We do well to let our soul reveal what we need to know.

On the other hand, there are times when we take time to let our soul catch up and we find a fresh awareness of blessings we’ve been too busy to acknowledge. Rabbi Harold Kushner wrote a book on Psalm 23. About the phrase “…surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life…,” he asked why the writer says goodness and mercy shall “follow” us? Because, he said, we are often so busy that we have run out ahead of them. When we take time to let our soul catch up, goodness and mercy can finally find us and climb into our lap. 

A few days ago, I realized I did not know where I’d left my iPhone. After looking in the obvious places, I took my iPad and brought up the “Find My” app.  From the menu, I touched the “Steve’s iPhone.” I then heard the phone chiming.  It turned out it was ten feet away — in the same room as me— but in a place I had never put it before.  I wondered if there could be a “Find My Soul” app that would alert us when we are spiritually lost.  What tone would capture our attention?

I was in Vienna in 2020.  Ubers and taxis were available to get around town, as was the subway system.  But there was also an old-fashioned electric streetcar system.  You’d often see the trams patiently making their way around the city in a large circle known as the Ringstrasse.  A city guide told me that Viennese often prefer to use the streetcars even though it’s not as fast as the other options; she said it helps them slow down between destinations.

In Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, the author and his friend are riding their motorcycles cross country.  At one point he thinks about the term “making good time.” When we say, “You made good time!” we usually mean “You made the trip about as fast as possible!” But when we rush somewhere to make “good time” we often arrive stressed out, tired, and oblivious to where we’ve been.  Instead of opting for freeways and interstates, he preferred taking country roads and older two-lane highways. That way he could appreciate unexpected vistas and new experiences along the way. That kind of traveling may take more time, but one can enjoy the time while you’re doing it.  For Pirsig, this was “making good time.”

“Making good time” means you haven’t left your soul behind in the pursuit of speed and efficiency.  Your soul has a chance to be present with you as you travel. And maybe goodness and mercy will join you instead of being left in the dust.