Why Slowing Down And Stopping Is The Way Forward: Joe Danis (Transcript)

And we engage in these projects that the community identifies, and we simply try and provide a little bit of support to increase their capacity.

On this particular occasion, I was there with my wife and a couple of friends from Canada, and we were there to help people in this small mountainside community build stoves in their homes, something that’s very very important there.

And on this particular occasion as we wrap up each visit there, we spend a lot of time at the school. And the school in these small El Salvadorian communities as is the case in much of the world really becomes the center, the focal point for a community. So we use the school as a place to meet with community leaders, with the teachers and others to coordinate our projects. And typically we wrap up these projects with some time at the school to play with the school children and hang out with them, and just experience what pure joy really looks like and feels like, and it’s always the best way to wrap up our trip.

And I remember as we were getting ready to close our time at the school, a dear friend of mine Don Freddie who was driving us that day motioned to the skies — and we were there during the rainy season — and he said to us, ‘You know we don’t get going, soon the skies are going to open up, and we’re going to experience some pretty heavy rainfall. And if you don’t want to sleep at the school tonight, we better get going.’

And everybody thought that was quite humorous, and that seeing the gringo sleeping at the school be kind of funny. Not so funny for me, so I thought we better get going.

So no sooner do we pile into the truck that the raindrops start to fall. And as is the case the children kind of chase along our vehicle as we take these curves up this very steep mountain road, and as they disappear into the distance behind one of the corners, the rain really starts to intensify.

And again if you’ve ever experienced what it looks like, this is after a rainfall in El Salvador, and these large crevices get dug into the road very very quickly.

And I remember as we were driving up the mountain that day, I was thinking the last stretch of road which is a very very steep stretch of gravel dirt road, I thought would be somewhat difficult to get up.

[read more]

And I remember as we were turning that last corner to the apex of this hill to the flatness of the peak of this hill, thinking I took a peek and saw these large crevices were quite deep into the earth at this time.

And no sooner do we make this turn that we get stuck, and there we are… we’re stuck in our truck on the side of a mountain in the middle of a downpour. We’re already soaked to the bone and the experience comes to a halt.

And so what do we do? Naturally we get out of the truck, we start to figure out a way how we’re going to push or pull or whatever we’re going to do to get this truck up the mountain, because no one wants to see the gringo sleep at the school that night.

And so as we’re getting behind the truck and we’re trying to push our way, we’re sliding back and forth but we’re not making much progress at all. And in fact, we’re not really going anywhere at this point.

And due to the time of the day it was getting late into the afternoon, people were coming home from work on the coffee plantations, in the local town, primarily young men coming back from their days of work. And they got behind the truck with us, and our numbers started to increase, and so we had more people power.

And as we’re pushing, we’re pushing harder, we’re still not making any progress; we’re not going anywhere. And I could sense a sense of frustration in the young man who was standing beside me. And at one point in time he starts banging on the quarter panel of the truck on the rear of the truck, and he says to Don Freddie, “Amigo necesitas ir más rápido.’ Hey buddy, you got to go faster.

And it was at that moment that I could see into the cab of the truck, Don Freddie put the vehicle in park, he very slowly methodically got out of the vehicle, and he walked back to where this young man was standing, and he put his arm around him, and he said to him, “Going faster doesn’t always get you further ahead. You just end up spinning your wheels. Sometimes you need to slow down and stop before you can move forward.”

And for me that was a moment that is absolutely frozen in time; here we are stuck on the side of a mountain, stuck in life, and what an incredible metaphor at that moment that I heard, those sage words of advice that sometimes you need to slow down before you can move forward, before you can climb that mountain that’s in front of you.

And I thought for a moment, you know as we’re standing there in the pouring rain, and we hear these incredible words that are spoken to us, and we take this moment to pause and reflect.

And some really interesting things happen there, and when I look at that moment, when I go back in time in the weeks and months after, I thought this wasn’t a spontaneous act; this was an act of great intention. I like to call this a pause with a purpose. This was a time out with intention that we were given at this moment.

And when we do this, when we slow down and stop, a lot of really incredible things happen.

And at that moment on the mountainside, the first thing that happened to us: we were able to catch our breath. We’re able to slow down; our heart rate slows down, our breathing patterns begin to normalize, we rest and we recover; such an important thing we’re doing something so physical. But at the same time you can relate that to anything in life.

And what happens when we slow down and we give ourselves a chance to recover, we give our sense of clarity, we find a greater sense of clarity — clarity to see the world as it truly is, not as we want to see it. And so that’s the first thing.

And when we start to see and think and feel more clearly, it gives us an opportunity to reflect, and again that day on the mountain we reflected on a couple of things. We reflected on our plan, the path that we had chosen, do we need to alter our plan, do we need to recalibrate, do we need to back up further down the mountain, do we need to shift our focus a little bit, do we need to pull more than we were pushing… all of those things come into play.

And when we reflect on our plan, what we’re really doing is we’re preparing, we’re doing our homework. And when we do that, we build a sense of confidence in ourselves. Preparedness does that; it breeds confidence.

The other thing that we reflected on were past times in our lives where we’ve overcome challenges. All of these people live in this environment, they experience challenges on a daily basis. So you go back into your memory banks, and you think about times where you’ve had to climb a mountain, where you’ve had to get yourself unstuck.

And at that moment in time, we gained the confidence to realize that we’ve done this before, and we can do this again.

And then lastly, when we give ourselves this moment of pause, to stop and reflect, reconnection is a really really important thing. And at that moment on the mountainside, as we looked around to each other we had this incredible sense of solidarity to know that we were all in this together, to know that we are not alone.

And so as we’re standing there on the mountainside looking at each other, realizing that we can do this, we have the people power to do this; we have the connection to do this; we have this shared experience that we all want to get up this mountainside right now.

And what that does is it helps us develop a sense of conviction, the wherewithal to persevere through challenging times, to face adversity and still move forward.

And so when I think about this time on the mountain and I relate it to life and again in the years since then and all the challenges that I’ve faced and how I’ve used this formula of recovery, of reflection, and of reconnection, I think about the time that we’re living in right now, global challenges with very very personal impacts, living during this time of a pandemic has left all of us feeling a myriad of emotions that are all valid and all need to be acknowledged and all need to be embraced, some of us feel sad, some of us feel anger or frustration, some of us are feeling a great sense of loss and grieving.

And many of us are left feeling isolated or alone. And when you think about what’s happening in the world today, whether it is the pandemic or climate change or social and political unrest, we’ve all been impacted by this in a significant way.

And so when I think about global challenges and personal impact, there is a way forward, but until we acknowledge the emotions that we’re feeling, until we slow down and stop, we’re not going to be able to move forward.

And what this has done to each of us is it’s forced us to ask some really really important questions of ourselves, about our future, about our career choices, about our relationships, questions about our personal health and well-being and how important it is, and finally a lot of questions around our purpose, and the desire to find greater meaning in our day-to-day lives.

We’ve all been given this opportunity, and so out of seeing a global pandemic, I like to think of it as a global pause, and the opportunity that we’ve been given to slow down and stop and recover and reflect and reconnect.

And so this is the opportunity that there is another way forward; we need to take this moment in time to do that, to recover to find clarity; it’s okay to acknowledge our emotions; we need to give ourselves the time and space to acknowledge those emotions, to find a greater sense of clarity, greater sense of clarity over who we are, where we are, and what it is that we are truly seeking, to reflect on the path that we have chosen, to reflect on the decisions that we’ve made, to reflect on our plan in life and to make appropriate decisions that align with our identity and where we are in life and what it is that we are truly seeking.

And I think it’s also important to reflect on our history, the challenges that we’ve faced, the scars that we have are all part of us and who we are today, and reflecting on all the successes and achievements to know that we have the confidence to believe in our ability to move forward.

And finally to reconnect to develop conviction. This is an incredible shared experience that we have in this moment in time in our history. Living during this pandemic has affected every single human being on this planet, and we can say that we have a shared experience like never before.

And in doing so we’ve all felt feelings of isolation; we’ve all felt some of these emotions that have run through us over the course of the past 18 months. And so we have this shared experience that we need to connect with on each other, to move forward to have the conviction to say that we can do this.

So when I go back to that day on the mountainside, and as we took our moment of pause and we recovered and we reflected on our plan, and we were buoyed by this sense of connectedness and solidarity, we got back behind the truck and we started to push.

And as we slowly made our way up the mountain, we got to the top of this hill, of this crest, and we gave some high fives to everyone who was there and some hugs, and this sense of celebration was happening in the pouring rain in the mountains of El Salvador and it was incredible.

And as we jumped back in the truck and we started to make our way down this bumpy road, I remember there was a sense of calm that overcame all of us. I don’t know if it was a sense of relief, a quiet sense of celebration, but I know for myself it was this incredible experience of knowing that you know we overcame something, we overcame a challenge, we got ourselves unstuck from something: we climbed the mountain, we did this together.

But I remember thinking that we’re going to see more rainy days, there will be more mountains ahead of us; there will be more challenges that we will face. There’s going to be adversity out there.

But for myself knowing that I have the opportunity and the ability to slow down and stop… to slow down and stop and find the clarity, the confidence, and the conviction to carry on, that helps me move forward in life. And I would encourage everyone to think of these moments as we’ve heard several times today to slow down and stop and the importance of that.

And so when I go back to this and I think about where we are right here right now, and this is a really really important message for me, and probably one of the most challenging things that we are faced with… all these questions about our lives is to understand and embrace the fact that we are exactly where we are supposed to be.

And I’m going to say that again because it’s really really hard to hear sometimes. When we’re stuck in life or stuck on the side of a mountain it doesn’t matter. Sometimes it’s hard to believe that we are exactly where we are supposed to be, and what has led us to this point.

And so for myself when I go back to that formula of clarity, confidence, and conviction, this is why I believe slowing down and stopping is the way forward.

Thank you.

Resources for Further Reading:

Settle Down, Pay Attention, Say Thank You: A How-To by Kristen Race (Transcript)

Billy Graham: Who is Jesus, Really? (Full Transcript)

Martin Luther King Jr. on Why Jesus Called a Man a Fool Speech (Transcript)

Against All Odds: Benny Prasad (Full Transcript)

[/read]

Related Posts

• How to Teach Students to Write With AI, Not By It
• Why Simple PowerPoints Teach Better Than Flashy Ones
• Transcript: John Mearsheimer Addresses European Parliament on “Europe’s Bleak Future”
• How the AI Revolution Shapes Higher Education in an Uncertain World
• The Case For Making Art When The World Is On Fire: Amie McNee (Transcript)