Bigger or Smaller, Fast or Slow

The act of writing a newspaper column often brings me to utter these familiar words: “it’s true confession time.” So here’s confession #1. Over our wonderful, laid-back, breathe-deeply Christmas holiday, I watched a bit more television than I normally do. Well, a lot more television than I normally do. I didn’t catch any episodes of Say Yes to the Dress (my regular daytime viewing in my first few months of grandmother duty), but I watched a lot of football, and cringed as Ralphie and Randy went down the slide at Higbees for the twentieth time in the Christmas Story marathon. I even viewed The Sound of Music, a film I first saw at the Riviera Theater in 1965. To the embarrassment of my family, I danced around the house for a couple of days, pretending to be Julie Andrews as I sang about raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens, and snowflakes that stay on my nose and eyelashes.

Since I’m not especially adept at the art of remote control, my expanded television viewing agenda meant that I also sat through way too many commercials, so I’ll make another confession – television commercials are not on my list of favorite things! But I was intrigued by one series of advertisements promoting a certain brand of cell phone service, as they raised an existential question to a table of precocious children. “What’s better?”   

Ah, what is better? How do we decide that value-laden question?  In the first commercial, the question was “what’s better - bigger or smaller,” while the second posed a similar query: “what’s better, faster or slower?” Of course the children answer the question with the correct cell-phone company, twenty-first century marketing answer – bigger is better, faster is better.

When asked “what’s fast?” the kids respond – a cheetah, my mom’s car, a spaceship. When asked “what’s slow?” a smart-mouthed little boy pipes up – “my grandma’s slow.”  Beck Bennett asks him, “would you like it better if she was fast?” The little wise guy responds: “I bet she would like it if she was fast.”

Well, Sonny, let me tell you – I’m a grandma, and I’m not so sure you’re right in that assumption. Just as bigger isn’t always better, sometimes “fast” isn’t all it’s cracked up to be either. Try cooking a pot roast in the microwave and tell me fast is better than slow.

How do we decide what is better? The assumption of the commercial is that bigger and faster (translate biggest and fastest) is better. The “bigger is better” is an assumption made in business, in retail, in the church, in higher education, and in television screen size (that’s why the children’s tree house had to be bigger instead of smaller in the big/small commercial).

Yet bigger is not always better. We appreciate small businesses that know their customers and provide friendly service. We welcome the embrace of a church family small enough to know our names and wrap its arms around us when tragedy strikes. We value the educational opportunities found at a small to mid-sized college. We enjoy spending time in a home where a fireplace is at the center of the room instead of a 90 inch flat-screen television.  

As for faster, it too has its limits. Drive too fast, and you’ll put others in danger, get your name in the Times-Gazette, and pay an expensive speeding ticket.  Type too fast, and you’ll end up with “ipi hpy upit jsmfd om yjr etpmh [;svr” (you got your hands in the wrong position). Run too fast on the beginning lap, and you may not be able to finish the race.

Which is better? The best answer is “both/and,” because life is not so simple. There is room for big and small, for fast and slow, and sometimes Grandma is OK with life at a slower pace. As an old African proverb reminds us: “If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.” It all depends on what you want out of life.  “To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven.”