Speeding

We have had a lot of construction in my neighborhood this past year. One of my neighbors particularly complains about the increased traffic and the roads narrowed by the parked vehicles of various vendors. But he especially complains about the speed with which many vehicles go down the street. The posted speed throughout the community is 25 miles per hour, and I will agree that too many, including some residents, seldom adhere to that. I have to wonder why so many of us are always in a hurry? While trying to find some answers to this question, I just found a short article entitled "8 Reasons Why You Should Not Rush Through Life." The author was mainly making these points for those still in the workplace with most of their lives still ahead of them. As I read through the reasons, I could actually think of people that I know who, though now retired, are still rushing. They don't know how to slow down. In the first weeks this spring of sheltering at home they spent their time busily cleaning out closets and cleaning and polishing everything in their homes. When there was nothing else to clean and every closet and drawer had been sorted through and rearranged with no longer needed items thrown or given away, they got antsy for things to go back to "normal" so they could get out of the house and GO. I can't say that my house wouldn't have benefitted from a bit of that sort of care, but I spent my spring spending a lot of time thinking and planning what I might like to do next. Writing this daily blog and planning the picture to go with it has actually helped me to slow down and take note of more of the little things in life. If you go back and look at previous posts you will see that most of them deal with rather simple things: various kinds of flowers, clouds, sun sets and sun rises, memories. To prepare them has taken a bit of contemplation, and contemplation cannot be done effectively if you are in a hurry. One of Merriam-Webster's definitions for contemplation explains this well: "an act of considering with attention." This act is something I find has changed how I get through each day. I don't sit around in contemplation. It has become part of the fabric of who I am. It seems to act as a kind of a brake, slowing things down to where I notice the little things, and allow myself to think and ask questions about them that I want to have answered. There is so much around us that we never even notice if we are rushing through the day. And oddly, at least for me, most days I am surprised when I come to the end of another day. Where did the time go?