The soul will not be rushed.

Our bodies, minds, and souls travel at such different speeds.

The mind is obviously the fastest. You see this most clearly in toddlers. Observe a 2-year-old trying to tie their shoelaces. They know what they want and how they want to do it, but their fingers just do not cooperate. Cue frustration.

The body moves at whatever speed we make it: carried by mechanical devices, flown through the air, put on wheels, pushed, pulled, drawn. The body, as the poem goes, is a dog. The body cannot lie.

But the soul needs time to transition. And when we try to move our bodies and minds too fast for the soul to catch up, we feel misaligned, dismembered, and just plain wrong.

I felt that way yesterday.

Last week I was volunteering at a sleep-away camp in Vermont, and Sunday I spent driving the 10 hours back to Brooklyn with my daughter. We started on a country road among lush green rolling hills, and ended up driving down the FDR drive in Manhattan with the radio blasting and singing at the top of our lungs to stay awake (I had been the only driver). To compound matters, after a week of community meals and activities, I woke up Monday to an 8am remote meeting with most people’s videos turned off. To say this felt jarring is a massive understatement. It felt alienating and almost violent.

The point here is not that I need to move to rural Vermont and live in a cabin with no running water. My body and soul are both quite happy with the return to modern sanitation, thank you very much.

The point is that I had forgotten to give myself time to transition, despite knowing from experience how important that is. Now, I also know, it will take longer.

The soul will not be rushed. I am grateful for this reminder to take the time it needs.