‘Try to instill the habit of lingering in your life. Leave the urge to hurry on to the next thing and replace it with a hankering for the more settled, deeper conversations that develop when people commit to spending time together. Give someone the gift of saying “I have nowhere else I’d rather be than here with you.” Shed the armor of busyness and distraction and see what happens when you choose to stay in one place for a while. Dawdle. Let the conversation meander.’ (Finding Yourself In The Kitchen)
I smiled on reading this passage recently: readers with long memories may remember I addressed my struggles with this issue, and the role that monastic training may have had in exacerbating my own tendencies. I am happy to keep learning how to do the opposite.
I initially had this on the slate for the spring, and it was one of the posts that I put aside once the pandemic landed. It didn’t seem that it was time to talk about lingering with others. But we can do that with our intimates as well as with friends and acquaintances.
Shundo David Haye 