Resolving to Underdrive

Spaceballs, brain-body battle, and my New Year's Resolution

The first question of the new year. The inaugural words that drip from our lips at the New Year’s Day bloody mary bar. The prickle at the back of our brain, a society-driven curiosity born from the fear of not having one because they might have one and then I should have one so I better think of one anyway.

“What is your New Year’s resolution?”

We have barely put away the noise makers, cleaned up the glitter, and recovered from the champagne before we hit each other with this inquiry. What we’re actually asking, the real question that will appease our curiosity is “What are you going to change this year?” or, even better, “What work needs to be done in your life this year?”

How will you cut back, save more, consume less, try harder, do better?

See, we know there’s work to be done. It’s a new year, after all. That hiccup of rest we allow ourselves over the holidays has left all of us feeling fat, guilty, lazy, and unaccomplished. It’s time to get back to schedules, to-do lists, producing. It’s time to go in to hyperdrive.

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Do you know what the definition of “hyperdrive” is, at least according to the Urban dictionary?

hyperdrive - When you move faster than the speed of light. Pretty cool. Spaceships and superheroes do it. Everything basically becomes blurry.

Based on this definition, I’ve spent the better part of my life in hyperdrive. I must admit, I am smugly satisfied at being in the same stratosphere as the likes of “spaceships and superheroes.” I am known for my Wonder Woman ability to manage multiple jobs, parenting, wife-ing, friending, and adulting (without Bracelets of Submission, I might add, which is bullshit). Much of my self worth is tied up in my ability to hold everything, our entire lives, above my head without letting a single speck of dust fall. Just call me Luisa.

In my youth, I thought some version of hyperdrive was everyone’s New Year’s resolution. Wasn’t it just the required commitment to achieve the stated goal to “do (or be) better?” Age, exhaustion, and trauma have enlightened me to the actual purpose of hyperdrive. It’s that last sentence. “Everything basically becomes blurry.” When all you are doing is doing, the blur permeates everything else so there is nothing to distract you from more doing.

Before the wonders of vision correction surgery, my husband was blessed with horrible eyesight. Like, take the glasses off and he’s patting the nightstand from an arm’s length away horrible. I require corrective lenses myself, but I sometimes forget whether or not I have them in until I look at a computer, so I can’t imagine operating in the visual equivalent of fuzz without my glasses. It’s odd, then, that the way he describes what the world looks like through this haze is somehow uncomfortably familiar. What’s even more uncomfortable is that this familiarity extends far beyond what I can see. It’s what every part of my body but my brain feels like in hyperdrive. Muted sounds, no sense of time, inability to recognize physical pain, abject apathy to emotion, indifference to beauty, impermeable to kindness, tenderness, or grace.

In hyperdrive, my brain is sharp, clear, and agile, my body discarded as just a vessel to carry it from place to place. Doing. Always doing.

Everything basically becomes blurry.

Photo by Matthew Brodeur on Unsplash

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There’s an antidote. All fans of the 1980’s cult parody, Spaceballs, can appreciate this metaphor. To eject yourself from hyperdrive, or "ludicrous speed” as Colonel Sandurz calls it, you just have to initiate a bodily effort to throw the EMERGENCY STOP lever on the control panel. It helpfully comes with its own warning “DO NOT USE” as engaging the lever results in an instantaneous stop, rocketing forward people, objects, and anything else not braced for the deceleration.

It’s, put mildly, a hard stop. But as the blur of hyperdrive starts to fade, the stars come back in to focus.

The abrupt halt brings other things to conscious awareness as well. The arms that kept you from rocketing forward and the smiles of the people who held you safe. The tenderness of the hip that rammed in to the table. The sound of your stomach grumbling, hungry for a meal you might actually taste. Delight to look up and see the sky above your head and feel the ground beneath your feet. Gratitude for stillness. And for not vomiting.

All of a sudden, you can see. And hear. And feel. And taste. And smile. And hold. And notice.

And be.

The antidote is much like the antonym…underdrive.

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I am new to this term. I came across it in this

When Women Exhale

beautiful book review by

Diamond-Michael Scott

. In her debut book, Space to Exhale, author Lisa Hurley explores a mindset she calls “underdrive”. Scott shares that underdrive is “a rejection of hustle culture in favor of rest and intentional living.”

Rest and intentional living.

It sounds so fundamentally different than cut back, save more, consume less, try harder, do better…doesn’t it? Rolling the words “rest” and “intentional living” around in my mouth, my body smiles. In those words, its role is much more than a vessel. In those words is a promise to protect it, to use it purposefully, to honor it.

My brain, however, is screaming “FUCK!!!!”. Phonetically capable, but functionally myopic, it sees two terms that do not equate to constant doing, and therefore instinctively wants to discard them. Abject panic takes over at the realization that there is no action available here. This is not a commitment and certainly no resolution.

My brain knows what happens when my body pulls the “EMERGENCY STOP” lever. It may be my strongest muscle, the engine behind the ludicrous speed, but it serves little purpose when the ship comes to a hard stop.

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If joy was my word of 2024, underdrive may have been my revelation. After four years of ludicrous everything, my body pulled the lever. I signed up for a yoga retreat in Costa Rica without knowing if I could afford it and showed up in the jungle finally ready to just lay still. More on the manifestation of that hard stop to come, but one of the biggest battles of that trip was my deep agitation around giving up sharp, clear, and agile. My acuity is one of my greatest strengths, and, if I’m being entirely honest, my brain kicks in before anything else whether I want it to or not. She’s kinda a bossy bitch.

But with rest, not sleep, which apparently are not synonyms (go figure), and mindful movement, my brain started to connect with some of her more dormant skills - creativity, imagination, patience, compassion. When allowed to dial it down, not ratchet it up, she had time to reconnect with my body, to apologize for abusing it, and to ask for its sage advice on how to move forward. With intention.

Underdrive, like yoga, is a practice. One I must repeatedly return to. While it is possible to flip the switch and initiate a hard stop, eventually forward movement begins again. At what speed and with what intention is part of putting the practice in to action.

My aunt walks twice a day, every day. She has for my entire life. She walks for exercise, so she’s pushing the pace. Unfortunately for the rest of us, she is not flexible on said pace, even when the walking we’re engaged in is not intended to be exercise. As a child, I was always a half step behind her, half jogging, half short stepping it to stay within arms length. I never understood why she couldn’t just slow the fuck down!

I remember that feeling now, the breathiness, the mild anxiety of not being able to keep up, and I acknowledge its presence any time my brain starts to lean on the lever. It never occurred to me when I was trying to keep up with my aunt that if I just slowed down to walk my own speed, she wouldn’t leave me. Even if she walked ahead of me, so what? I still had her in eyesight, and it’s possible (although unlikely if you know my aunt) that if she saw me behind her, she might slow down too. Now, when I feel my brain begin to pick up its cadence, I practice letting my body slow down. I’m not intending to piss off my brain; I’m just refusing to run to keep up.

I get so tickled when the practice works! Joy floods my system when my brain turns around to find out where I am and sees my body laying in child’s pose on the mat. See, I am aware that my brain is programmed to hustle culture and that I’m not going to change that any time soon. I can, however, tether my brain to rest and intentional living through my body. She can’t leave me, and so I can utilize my body’s leverage in this relationship to slow her down, loosen her up, help her lift her eyes until the stars come back in to view.

Last week, I found my phrase of the year. “I am here now.” This week, I found my resolution. This year, I want to nudge my brain to do a little less speed walking, opting instead to join my body on a leisurely stroll somewhere exquisite. I want to notice touch, asking for the kind I like, not just rejecting the kind I don’t. I want to be proud of what I don’t accomplish, not because it was outside of my reach but because I intentionally said no to it. I want to pause, luxuriating in an extra minute of a friend’s attention, unhurried by whatever is supposed to come next. I want to rest. Really rest. For longer than I’m comfortable with.

Underdrive.

My 2025 New Year’s Resolution. BOOM! 🎆

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Please consider going to buy Lisa Hurley’s book, Space to Exhale. While it is intentionally written by a black woman for black women, I pre-ordered my copy because I believe profound wisdom is universal.

While you are buying books, Deserts to Mountaintops: The Pilgrimage of Motherhood, comes out THIS SATURDAY, January 25th! In this book, I share an intimate look at the complicated relationship I had with my mother, her illness and subsequent death, and how it has impacted my own mothering. Please consider buying your copy on LAUNCH DAY to help us achieve bestseller status. HINT - The ebook will be just $0.99 that day AND I narrate my own chapter! You’re welcome. 😘