Life In The Slow Lane

“Patience may seem like a superficial virtue, but actually it embodies a deep insight into the nature of things.  They’re intertwining, messy, and usually not about you”.

-Rick Hanson

 

“Patience has all the time it needs”.

-Allan Lokos

 

I am always amazed at the impatience of people.  People like the guy who honks at you the split second after the light turns green or the guy that tailgates you when you are already 15 miles an hour over the speed limit.  Everyone seems to always be in a hurry.  For what, I have no idea.  My children laugh at me when I say, “The journey is the destination”.  This summer I have a trip planned to the ocean.  I have decided to drive because I hate flying.  I have no fear of flying but I find the whole experience stressful.  A lot of that is dealing with impatient people.  I am going to a part of the country I have never been to and I want to see the land and scenery along the way.  As Gandhi once said, “there is more to life than increasing it’s speed”.  Over the weekend I saw a segment on CBS Sunday Morning about a television show in Norway called “Slow TV”.  One of the shows was nothing but watching logs burning in a fireplace.  Another show was a train ride through the Norwegian countryside.  They put a camera on the front of the train and the show lasted for eight hours.  It was like you were the engineer of the train. Imagine C-Span in nature.  I am all about slowing life down.  This past weekend was a very rare weekend without my granddaughter staying at my home.  Admittedly I missed her.  I didn’t leave the house the entire weekend.  I slept late, drank a pot of coffee, listened to a lot of music, read from a new book, took a few naps, and walked in my back yard.  Many people would consider this a very boring weekend.  I was in hog heaven.  It was an introverts dream.  I had nothing to do, nowhere to go, and all day to get there.  I definitely wasn’t in a hurry.  It was my own channel on “Slow TV”.