Are We Moving Too Fast?

Originally posted to Believe In... blog March 29, 2012.

This morning as I was driving down the highway I pulled out to pass a couple of transport trucks and I looked in my rearview and saw an SUV coming up pretty quick behind me.  They proceeded to ride my bumper until I pulled back in after passing the trucks.  Now I will admit that I don’t drive the speed limit and by that I don’t mean that I drive under the speed limit but obviously this person was in quite the hurry.  As the SUV zoomed (I love that word!) past me it got me to thinking, what could be causing that person to be in such a rush that they need to drive that fast?  All the way home I was thinking about this and how fast we all seem to be moving in our society.  Not only to we not drive the speed limit but how often do we sit down and just take a break from everything that is going on around us and just be aware.

The last time you were out driving, did you notice all the street/road signs you pass?  Did you notice if there was an Inukshuk built on the boulders on the side of the highway?  There is one near where I live and I often wonder when driving past it how many people actually notice that it is there.  I would be what some people might call observant, I tend to see the smallest detail and notice my surroundings more than most people.  This may have started when I was in public school.  I remember going to a school assembly once and I really have no idea what it was about exactly but I do remember one of the challenges that the speaker put out there was to pay more attention to your surroundings.  I remember taking a long time to walk home that day as I started to notice house, flowers and many other things that I had walked past a million times (well maybe that is an overstatement) and never noticed.

Are we as a society so caught up in what “we” are doing that we are no longer noticing our surroundings?  How many of you have noticed that after our summer like weather last week that lots of trees have buds on them and there are daffodils in full bloom? 

Has the phrase “Stop the world I want to get off” ever crossed your mind?  Are you feeling overwhelmed by the amount of stuff you seem to have to do?  Thursday is my office day, my day sans daughter, and I will tell you that I tend to jam pack that day with way too much stuff to do and when the day finally gets here I have no idea where to start on my “to do” list.  I feel completely overwhelmed and therefore usually end up accomplishing very little of my list.  And then of course the guilt kicks in!

Are all the ‘things’ we are doing really necessary or are we doing them because we feel we should do them?  Are we moving too fast in our own lives that we are not even really ‘living’ our lives and enjoying all that is around us?

I am putting a challenge out there to each of you…take one minute a day to just be; after all we are human beings not human doings (I borrowed that from someone else BTW).  Stop what you are doing and just breathe and enjoy your surroundings, can you hear the birds singing or the traffic going by?  Allow your body and mind that one minute of down time and see what happens and what you notice that you might have missed otherwise.

And now I am going to enjoy the rest of my cup of tea….