What’s The Hurry?

If I really am a being on an eter­nal jour­ney, then why would I want to hurry through this day? There will be many other days — all stretch­ing into one eter­nal day. Life here has its lim­its. Some days on earth are more pleas­ant than oth­ers it seems. It makes sense to want to hurry through some of them (sick days for exam­ple). Peo­ple locked into mis­er­able jobs antic­i­pate a few hours of enjoy­ment after they clock out. Then again, antic­i­pa­tion actu­ally slows the per­cep­tion of time down, so they might as well find ways of enjoy­ing their work (I have had some of those jobs).

It is dif­fi­cult for us not to live in con­stant antic­i­pa­tion. We are like drug addicts — pit­ting one expe­ri­ence against another. Label­ing some as “highs” or “lows” and miss­ing most of life in between. Stay­ing in the moment brings a sense of deep inner peace. It is learn­ing to relax into the actual speed of the uni­verse — that exists only in the moment any­way.

Here is the best way I have found to increase the qual­ity of life: Do not be in a hurry. Take each lit­tle task as it comes along. Let the uni­verse give you your day at Deity’s pace. There is no rea­son to hurry up and wait. Clock time was invented so peo­ple could coor­di­nate their group activ­i­ties. It was never designed to be wor­shipped. Projects take as long as they take. We do them in install­ments. Each action is a build­ing block toward the fin­ished struc­ture. Each one counts. “Sip” through the events. You can­not drink from a time-line fire hose. Enough air will pass through your lungs today to fill a gym­na­sium — or even more. Your heart will pump enough blood to fill a tank truck. These things will all hap­pen in very small mea­sures at a rel­a­tively con­stant speed.

“Haste makes waste” — as the old adage goes. It also makes for high blood pres­sure, car wrecks, spilled milk, rude­ness, insen­si­tiv­ity, and the pan­icked pace of get­ting a child to school and then to work while feel­ing like you are run­ning hope­lessly late. Do your­self an eter­nal favor: start a few min­utes ear­lier. Be a bit more delib­er­ate. Be con­scious of an eter­nal time frame that has not for­got­ten who you are and what you need.