Making Time For Zippers
BY ARLENE HARDER, MA, MFT
In our activity-packed, over-busy lives, we all need ways to slow down, even if only a little.
The designers of my purse carefully constructed a long zipper at the top of this holder for lipstick, wallet, keys, tissues, pens, checkbook, credit cards, small notebook, a paperback, and anything else that can be stuffed inside. They thought their design was practical and would prevent all that stuff from falling out. What they failed to see was that zipping a zipper is too difficult for a busy person. It simply takes too long. Grabbing the little metal piece at one end of the zipper and moving it to the other end must take at least a second or two.
Consequently, I often didn't bother to close it. Even snapping a snap wouldn't have worked for me. I needed to conserve my time and energy for more important things. You know what it's like when there are places to go, people to see, things to do. And despite my intention to slow down after recovery from Guillain-Barre Syndrome, the pressure of commitments, plans, and activities firmly reasserted itself.
Saving time by not zipping the zipper on my purse would have gone on for a long time had it not been for one day last February. Here's what happened.
We were visiting our children and their families in Eureka, California, and I tossed my purse — unzipped, naturally — onto the floor of the back seat without giving it a thought. When we arrived back at my son's house, it was dark and I grabbed the purse off the floor because I knew better than to leave a purse with all its valuable contents out in a car illuminated by a bright street light. (I had learned that lesson several years ago, when we parked our car in a brightly lit mall after the stores closed to take a walk. Upon our return, we noticed someone had broken the lock and stolen the purse.)
Uh oh. Seems like I had another lesson to learn. The next morning, we noticed the car door was unlocked. However, since the door wasn't jimmied, it didn't appear someone had broken in. Apparently one of us had forgotten to lock the door (and since I was in a hurry to get into the house, I wouldn't be surprised if I were the guilty one). Anyway, I noticed that my keys were on the floor of the back seat and realized they had fallen out when I threw my purse back there. It was just a coincidence that the very evening the door was left unlocked had been the day I'd thrown the purse onto the floor. Luckily no one had stolen the car.
Unfortunately, when I later needed to use my wallet and couldn't find it, we realized what had happened. Not only did my keys fall out of the unzipped purse. My wallet had also dropped onto the floor.
We suspected that during the night someone came along, looked into the car, saw the wallet, tried the door, found it open, reached in, quickly grabbed the wallet, and hurried away. We were just lucky the keys weren't seen or maybe the person who took the wallet saw the keys, but didn't know how to drive.
Anyway, if you've ever had your credit cards and check book stolen or lost, you know how much time and frustration is needed to straighten everything out again. Why, it takes tens of thousands of seconds and loads of bother.
That's when I decided I would definitely start zipping the zipper on my purse — even if it meant losing a precious second or two each time I did it! Consequently, I've developed a regular habit of zipping the zipper. In fact, if I'm at the checkout stand, I may even unzip the zipper, take out my wallet, zip the zipper, pay for the items, unzip the zipper, put the wallet back in, and zip it up again.
But here's why my story belongs in our symbols section. Rather than simply being determined to regularly zip my purse's zipper, which would have been a good habit to develop on its own merits, I realized that my unwillingness to take a simple moment to close my purse was a metaphor for a much larger problem -- my unwillingness to take the time to create more space in my life, space in which I didn't need to "produce" or "do" anything except to live more calmly and peacefully.
That's how I decided that each time I zipped the zipper on my purse I would consciously think about my intention to not be in such a hurry. And now, when I pull that zipper tab, I take a deep breath and deliberately slow my pace, bringing some calm into my life, even if only for a moment.
I'm writing all this because it's just possible that you may find it helpful to have a reminder to slow down, a reminder to walk with greater calm, a reminder to create more space in your life, a reminder to simply "be" instead of rushing around to "do" things, a reminder that the merry-go-round slows down periodically and you'll only have an unhurried life if you don't keep buying tickets to ride over and over and over again.
That is why I recommend you do this:
Choose something you do frequently that can be used as a conscious reminder to slow down and to live more calmly.
Of course, this reminder needs to be something that has meaning to you and is done on a fairly regular basis. You may already zip (or snap) your purse each time you use it. And if you're a guy, you are unlikely to carry a purse and already have a well-established habit of zipping your zipper (at least I hope so). But maybe you grab the mail from the mailbox, throw it all on the cupboard shelf, scramble through it briefly, and let it pile up, creating a condition that's ripe for losing important correspondence. So in your case, deliberately separating bills and letters from junk mail, and then putting the former on your desk and the latter in the circular filing cabinet, can be your reminder that you don't have to rush through every activity.
There are dozens of things you do every day that can become specific reminders to slow down, such as brushing your teeth, washing your hands, getting something out of the refrigerator, taking a drink, opening a door, sitting down, stopping at a stop light, looking at the clock.
Choose one thing and then, each time to do it, be aware that it is your personal reminder to create more space, to move with less tension, to have more peace in your life. Of course, you can also use this technique to remind yourself of other habits you'd like to develop, such as saying "thank you" and "I love you" more often, or learning about a topic you've been meaning to explore, or finishing a project you've been postponing, or praying more, or anything where a reminder would be handy.
While I still tend to put more pressure on myself than my body appreciates, I am beginning to allow more spaces to appear in my life, a process which I definitely attribute to using my purse's zipper as a reminder. In any case, I haven't lost my wallet again.
© Copyright 2001, Arlene Harder, MA, MFT |
These quotes come from 
, written and compiled by H. Jackson Brown, Jr., and are reprinted with permission.
