Don’t hurry, be happy ... to take your time
Modern life is hectic, but try not to be in too much of a rush all the time, writes Ian Cole
It seems more aspects of our lives have become faster. Everyone seems to be in more of a hurry! How come? Let’s blame the internet and modern communications for a start. As communications have become more instant, maybe that speed has transferred into other parts of life. Because more can be done in a set period of time, the temptation is to try to do more in that period of time. As things become more instant, it can legitimise being in a hurry to push and get more done.
English academic Benjamin Jowett said it is important in this world to be pushing, but it is fatal to seem to be doing so. It is par for the course for some to race towards their goals, and so many do achieve at quite a young age.
School principals, for example, seem to be getting younger, taking charge of schools aged only in their 30s and 40s. Way back they seemed to have reached those positions in their 50s and 60s.
Former prime minister Gough Whitlam set the bar fairly high here when light-heartedly ribbing his principal private secretary, Race Mathews, on his 33rd birthday. He said: “What have you done with your life at an age when Alexander the Great had conquered the world and Jesus Christ had saved it?”
People in a hurry to watch a television series are now able, in many cases, to view that series immediately and not wait for the next episode in a week’s time.
Travel times, of course, have become faster. Jules Verne was proud of the fact that Phileas Fogg could go around the world in 80 days, while today’s businessman in a hurry might be rueing all the lost time from the travelling.
These days traffic jams make travel slower, but may increase the need to be in a hurry and therefore to go faster. As the driver said as he was being given a speeding ticket by a policeman who had asked him if he had seen the speed sign, “Yes, I did see the speed sign, I just didn’t see you!”
Historically, though, there have been famous occasions when people may have been in too much of a hurry. Sixty years ago this November, US president John F. Kennedy was assassinated. There was a desire to arrest his assassin in a hurry to validate the American law system. One Lee Harvey Oswald was quickly arrested and later he himself was shot dead. Not long afterwards, lawyer Mark Lane produced his best-selling book casting doubts on the Warren Commission’s findings about the assassination. His book was titled Rush to Judgment, indicating that in the hurry to find an assailant, key evidence had been missed.
Maybe the last word in being in too much of a hurry these days goes to Danish poet Piet Hein with the gravestone epitaph of someone who was always in a rush:
Here he lies, extinguished in his prime, A victim of modernity. Yesterday, he hadn’t time.
But now, he has eternity.