The high cost of saving time

When my oldest girls were little, I did their hair every morning in tight braids (so tight they claim their faces looked like they'd had botox injections). I did this because tightly braided hair stayed neat and tidy all day.

One morning as I was getting out the brushes and comb, one of my girls said to me pleadingly, "Brush it slow, mama, do it slow."
I was puzzled for a minute, and then I felt that unsteady sensation of dismay that comes when we realize we've allowed an unwholesome practice to take root. So often in the mornings I wanted to rush through this task to get on to the business of life, the school books, the cooking, the housecleaning (for company, we were always having company), and I am always running late for something. And what happened is that I would brush their hair rather, um, briskly, and when they complained I would say, "I'm sorry, but we're in a hurry."

Okay, sometimes when I accidentally brushed an ear instead of a handful of hair in my unseemly haste I would say, "I'm so sorry, but your ears got tangled in your sleep." Humour, or lame attempts thereof, side, the pleas of 'brush slow, Mama, brush slow' had a deeper meaning. I realized this haste had become the norm instead of the exception, hence the plea to "brush it slow."

I resolved to pay more attention to the moment, to take time to brush their hair slowly so that the hair brushing ceased to be a painful ordeal. Now, they wanted me to go slowly because speed involved sometimes too brusque of a hair, or ear, brushing. But what I discovered is that when I slowed down while I did their hair, we often had lovely and interesting conversations- conversations that wouldn't have happened at any other time of day, and that couldn't happen when I was rushing to be on to the next thing. We sang songs, told stories, and they asked questions about things they'd noticed- things they might not have had the time to think of if we hadn't been sitting quietly together while I 'brushed it slow.'


Sometimes the cost of saving time is too high. More on the high cost of convenience over at Frugal Hacks.

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