It takes about a minute to start to get your mind around some­thing and make a bet­ter deci­sion. Life changes con­stantly. The future seems to be headed toward us faster and faster. In sheer panic, we start mak­ing deci­sions to keep from feel­ing over­whelmed. These quickly-made deci­sions only seem to speed up the other issues headed our way. Terms like, “future shock” and “deci­sion shock” have become com­mon place. With those terms have come “burnout” and “drop­ping out.”

The tread­mill has become the metaphor. The Alice in Won­der­land illu­sion of “hav­ing to run faster just to stay in the same place” has become the life-pace syn­drome of this era. Even aging adults, very small chil­dren, and peo­ple with phys­i­cal lim­i­ta­tions can­not escape the demands of a world in a hurry. Quo­tas have to be met in an instant grat­i­fi­ca­tion soci­ety. “Time is money.” (Com­pletely irra­tional. Time is time. Money is money. If I ever get my hands on the clod that equated them!) The ten­sion lev­els appear in numer­ous diag­noses — all of which look a lot like Atten­tion Deficit Dis­or­der. The world merry-go-round has become a blur.

Wait a minute! Stop it! You have the anti­dote. All you have to do is punc­tu­ate your exis­tence with a minute here or there of wait­ing. Defy the illu­sion. Make the world wait on you for one minute. Refuse to be rushed. Do one thing at a time. Have the courage to say, “No, it is not ready yet.” Chant with me the mantra: “It will hap­pen when it hap­pens.” Dig up some old say­ings that addressed this before: “Rome was not built in a day.” Bet­ter yet: “Wait upon the Lord.”

How did we get into the busi­ness of try­ing to hurry God? Are we so inse­cure that we have to have clo­sure to every­thing? Remem­ber that, “Any­thing worth hav­ing is worth wait­ing for.” Relax. Chill out. Take a break. Breathe! In the greater scheme of things it is just another day. Any­thing that falls apart because you refuse to rush needs to fall apart. Let the whirl­wind of life blow around you but not through you. Sixty sec­onds here and there. That is all you need to apply the brakes to your run­away world.

Other than sun­rise and sun­set, the rest is not totally pre­dictable. That is what makes life so much fun. I am not too keen on tragedy, but even it has a place. Due to dis­as­ters, tech­nolo­gies are improved. Even famine can be a life les­son for those that sur­vive it. What human­ity suf­fers most becomes its best teacher. As the result of huge human losses, we focus on clean drink­ing water, safe foods, reli­able hous­ing, and insti­tu­tions that add to the sta­bil­ity of a soci­ety. All of these are by default. They are the result of the pains of not hav­ing them.

Pre­dictabil­ity dulls you out. Adven­tures are best sought, but if you do not go after them, they come after you. They can­not be avoided for very long. The most timid recluse still has to face chang­ing weather pat­terns, inva­sive peo­ple, the plethora of minor and major ail­ments of being phys­i­cal, and the sheer prob­a­bil­ity of it all. No one can hide from life for very long. It brings us just enough pre­dictabil­ity to make the unpre­dictabil­ity fun.

Com­fort zones are tem­po­rary and mostly imag­i­nary. Peo­ple will seek out pain to end the tedium of the com­pletely pre­dictable that leads to intol­er­a­ble numb­ness. To be alive at all is to live between the extremes. Aging can­not be avoided. The mind hungers con­tin­u­ally — as does the body. No need can be fully or per­ma­nently sat­is­fied. Life beck­ons us onward with depri­va­tion and fear. It also con­soles us with our sen­sa­tions of satisfaction.

Wel­come to “life the unpre­dictable!” Your car will break or pos­si­bly be stolen. The smell from the kitchen is the toast burn­ing. You did not think you would find a snake under the sink did you! Is this the first time you have fallen down the stairs? So, what hap­pened to your bank account? Where did you get such a win­ning idea? So you thought you were going to have a boy! Sorry to hear about your loss. Con­grat­u­la­tions on that expen­sive degree that is now out of date. Where are you doing your Mas­ters? What are you going to do with your time, now that your last teen has joined the navy? Oops! It looks like you fell in love. You are being trans­ferred where?

Relax, God is just teach­ing us how to have a lit­tle fun.

I have learned that when I add a new project or endeavor I will have to sub­tract one. There is a sat­u­ra­tion point to being human. We can only do so much. When I am in a restau­rant or on a flight with some time to kill, I get a piece of paper and work on my pri­or­ity list. The list includes every­thing from pro­fes­sional tasks to thought processes. An exam­ple of my thought processes list is the fol­low­ing: Have so many good things to con­tem­plate that there is no time to worry.

I no longer have qualms about ignor­ing lesser tasks and demands. For the most part, I am min­i­miz­ing Christ­mas this year (much like I have in other years). I am also ignor­ing time wasters that other peo­ple try to add to my list. My house was not as clean this year as last year, but it is because I was doing bet­ter things. Sev­eral times this year, I have had to sub­tract social event time to accom­plish higher pri­or­ity projects. When it comes to scratch­ing things off the “to do” list, I do not even blink. If some­thing I have scratched off the list truly has to be done, some­one else will do it (and sel­dom does that hap­pen — which tells you the real value of some­thing I thought was important).

This year there will be sev­eral pro­fes­sional and per­sonal addi­tions to my life that are far more impor­tant than lesser things on the list. Sel­dom do I wash my car any­more. It seems like the laun­dry bas­ket stays full too. Sev­eral things on the list can be expanded but never con­tracted: med­i­ta­tion, prayer, and pro­fes­sional read­ing head the list. Every­thing else can wait. I have also learned not to let any­one else deter­mine my pri­or­ity list — no mat­ter what.

Ever notice how hav­ing a baby or going to col­lege forces you to sub­tract a whole lot of other things? Going down the eco­nomic scale for any rea­son will drive you back to look at your pri­or­ity list — and it should. The good news is that we can live hap­pier by sub­tract­ing half or more of the mate­r­ial things we think we need. The land­fills are full. This year for Christ­mas, give peace instead of plas­tic. Add to the spir­i­tual; sub­tract from the material.

You are sup­posed to call them flight atten­dants, but when they are all female, I am old enough to resort to the orig­i­nal term. Gen­der is not a curse. The lan­guages of romance are heav­ier laden with terms that have dis­tinct gen­der ref­er­ences. The same is true for great nov­els and epic movies. Try re-casting Romeo and Juliet in totally gen­der neu­tral sto­ry­lines and see what hap­pens. How dare Shake­speare refer to young females as damsels! If he lived today, he would be kicked off planes for using such terms (and prob­a­bly out of a num­ber of “mod­ern” universities…and PC churches).

Stew­ardesses talk in code, as do most pro­fes­sion­als. They are very kind, but they can be direct when they need to be. Sel­dom do they get any recog­ni­tion for what they have to tol­er­ate. They also have to deal with the same set of stres­sors repeat­edly in very close quar­ters. Watch them closely; they can carry on com­plete con­ver­sa­tions by just look­ing at each other in var­i­ous ways. They are bet­ter at this than their male coun­ter­parts. Men just don’t have the range of facial expres­sions. They also use a series of abbre­vi­a­tions and code terms that facil­i­tate their tasks. Some of the rea­sons for codes and ges­tures have to do with always appear­ing polite and hav­ing to com­mu­ni­cate over engine and peo­ple noises. In any dis­as­ter, these peo­ple would be among my first pick. It is more than their train­ing. They are like emer­gency per­son­nel in the com­mu­nity, but are in a lit­tle bit dif­fer­ent set­ting. They are six miles up and trav­el­ing with one to three hun­dred peo­ple at four-hundred miles per hour. One of the most amaz­ing things is their abil­ity to smile and put a pas­sen­ger in his or her place very directly. They are pro­tected by a whole range of laws that can get a pas­sen­ger twenty years in prison just for cross­ing them. Fly­ing has become seri­ous business.

Yes, those kind peo­ple serv­ing you cof­fee can see to it you never see the light of day if you mess with them. They have a crazy job, and they do it well. Angels at the same alti­tude can learn from them. They are patient but per­sis­tent. I watched two of them kindly make sure a person’s cell phone was off before take­off. That per­son with the phone was a first-time flyer and was ignor­ing them. She did not real­ize that she was only sec­onds away from eat­ing her phone, as it would be fed to her by two smil­ing stew­ardesses — gen­tle but firm…and with­out one sip of water to wash it down.