Festina Lente:

fe•sti•na•len•te

: make haste slowly; proceed expeditiously but prudently

My name, Aldus, was given to me because of an interest my father took in a man named Aldus Manutius. Aldus was the founder of the Aldine Press and an influential scholar and thinker of his time (around the Italian Renaissance). On much of his work he stamped the press mark of a dolphin wrapping around an anchor, most often it also included his name and the Italian phrase festina lente. The translated phrase has many near meanings but I was most intrigued by the translation of “Make haste slowly”. It is powerful to me because it can seem so contradictory. Just imagine me explaining to my mother as a child that the reason my chores were not yet done is because I was making haste slowly… So why was this his motto? What can it/should it mean for us?.

I see this phrase as two important parts that together make a greater truth. First, Make haste. We miss out so often on things that will benefit our lives because we lack urgency, we are scared, or we are overthinking…. there are many excuses for not being decisive but there is one main solution. Make Haste. Go with your gut, shoot from the hip, trust your instincts. We are faced every day with choices….the domino effect suggests that each of those choices may have eternal consequences but we still have to push over each domino. We make the important decisions today, just as much as we did yesterday and will tomorrow. That means that at times it can be expeditious of us to make quick decisions. The decisions we make quickly can more clearly reveal to us our faults and our strengths. They show us our passions and our fears. There are many decisions that are better made without taking time to address every possible outcome and every future fear. Think about dating, no one goes on a first date because they are ready to get married to that person…. but how many people would decline a first date because they fear failure? How often do we miss out on reaching our goals because we are so concerned about reaching them the way we planned, the way others have, or the way we think is best? We think of reaching our goals and getting where we want to be in such a linear way that when something happens that could speed up that timeline we shy away. I think we would all be a little bit closer to the places we want to be if we were quicker to overlook the unimportant details of decisions. That is where haste can help. Keep the most important information in the decision at the forefront of your mind and do your best to be uninfluenced by the unimportant. I have found in my life that after I have pondered the most important details of any decision and haven’t been able to make a decision, I will try to view the decision through details that are further and further away from the important factors of the decision. Those details that are less and less connected to the central issue should not be given the power to sway our decisions. Many of our fears hinder us when we overvalue them. When we make haste in the decision making process those fears and external concerns that are unimportant remain unaddressed.

The other half of the phrase is slowly…. or to proceed with prudence and we often think this means the opposite of haste. I think that it is actually more complimentary to haste then we think. Prudence is deciding which of our fears are rational and only allowing them power to nudge us in the right direction…. not enough to deter us from making the right decisions. We show prudence through our decisiveness not our indecision. Sometimes we are so eager to make decisions based on the immediate emotions we feel that we overlook the realities of it. In order to be prudent we make sure that our quickly made decisions are not based solely on emotions. The that we feel do have weight in a decision making process but they should still be carefully measured against the outcomes and alternatives. It is difficult for me at times to remember this. When you have an idea of who or where you want to be and you are actively working towards that, you lean into making some decisions because of where you want to be not specifically because it will help you get there. So in other words, just because you would like to be a historian one day doesn’t mean that taking a job at a museum is the best option for you. Just because you want to have a successful marriage doesn’t mean that you should propose to everyone you see… And as a final example, just because you want to be more Christlike doesn’t mean you should always make sacrifices. Christ didn’t make any meaningless sacrifices. There are decisions like these that we sometimes make because we are too focused on where we want to be and not where the decisions we are making might actually take us.

After these two relatively contradictory paragraphs it is fair to say that the decision making is as difficult as always. That difficulty is a great tool and a great weapon. It will always be a necessary element of the choices we will need to make. In it is a great beauty and a great struggle. We face difficult decisions and we get to choose. There is great potential for good and likewise a worrisome amount of potential evil. We can find ourselves making quick decisions or facing a sort of paralysis. These are things we all face because we have the chance to choose and the wisdom to care about the outcomes. This dilemma reminded me of a quote from Alexis de Tocqueville. While commenting on the American people he said “I saw in America the most free and most enlightened men placed in the happiest condition in the world; it seemed to me that a kind of cloud habitually covered their features; they appeared to me grave and almost sad, even in their pleasures….When all the [privileges] of birth and fortune are destroyed, when all the professions are open to everyone, and when you can reach the summit of each one of them on your own, an immense and easy career seems to open before the ambition of men, and they readily imagine that they are called to great destinies. But that is an erroneous view that experience corrects every day. The same equality that allows each citizen to conceive vast hopes makes all citizens individually weak. It limits their strengths on all sides, at the same time that it allows their desires to expand”. The only way to really capitalize on these conditions of happiness and freedom is to be decisive. The incredible amount of possibilities open to us should not be alllowed to paralyze our progress. It is a sad and sorry way to live, constantly worried about making the best decisions and never truly making any… so worried about taking the best shot that you never really shoot… and so worried about failure that we never taste success.

Agency remains the most important factor in all of this. Much of what I have said is true at specific times and with specific decisions but none of these thoughts should be blindly applied to every decision that you or I make. We will never be able to make the best decisions without excercising our own agency. We still need to be conscious of how information applies to our specific situations and problems. I am attempting to share that there is a significant and sometimes unrecognized difference between a stupor of thought and a paralysis of indecision. One of those is an answer and the other a failure to excerise agency. Let’s, all of us, find ways to make decisions easier for ourselves but addressing the important details and letting the unimportant remain unaddressed. Let’s be prudent and deliberate. Let’s Make Haste Slowly. Festina Lente.