HARDER BETTER FASTER STRONGER

There is no substitute for patient, diligent, good old fashioned hard work. Watching Marlene twist my hair back and forth, spending countless hours at her art, the entire time on her feet, I marvel how often this lesson is lost on me. Twisting and retwisting, constantly readjusting, heedless of the time, she's obviously working for the sake of quality, not for the convenience of efficiency.

Her snail's pace got me thinking about the premium I've placed on efficiency in my life:

In third grade, I was proud that I had mastered my times tables and would beam when it was announced that I was among the speediest multipliers in the entire grade. There were others who had gotten the problems right, but none had done it with such blazing accuracy.

In high school and college, I routinely finished essay based exams with time to spare, and I pompously left the test sites with a smug grin.

Of course, where I was slow in execution, I assumed I lacked aptitude. I remember doing calculus problems at the beginning of senior of high school and realizing that I was always the last person to complete assignments. My confidence plummeted, not because I got wrong answers, but because, I was slower than my classmates, and therefore a weak math student."

Life in the real would has not been different from my school days. As a 24 year old intern at Sony, the name of the game was handling and prioritizing tasks from a list of 300,000 things that had to be completed, and then, like a sniper, shooting them down with pin point accuracy and acuity. I remember that I would often arrive to the job a full 45 minutes early to do battle with the copy machines, and have the 600 pages printed well before any executive walked in (the 600 page figure is not an exaggeration. They ate up massive quantities of paper over on Madison Ave.). I wanted to give the appearance that I could fly through anything, and do so with superior accuracy.

Even in quotidian matters I demand speedy execution. I want faster internet, cell service, and Wi-Fi. I insist that the subway arrive sooner than its made to arrive, and when I finally get on, I insist that it get to where I need to go with dizzying speed. FASTER, I frantically mutter to myself as the east side trains inch along during rush hour, FASTER!!!!!!!

And yet there was Marlene, and her slow, meticulous fingers. Committed to craft. Invested in style. Pulling my hair with gentle firmness that makes my scalp sing in pain. Her attention to detail, immaculate. By the fifth hour that I had been in the chair, I wanted to scream. But when she finally released me to the care of a hair dryer I knew the magic she had worked. Another stylist would have had me out an hour before. But I surely wouldn't have been so beautiful.