There's something about speed in our culture. We love it more and more, faster and faster. Speed is good. Slow is bad. But there's another side to this clock and to this story that unfolds right here in Chicago every day...!
Getting things done fast has its obvious advantages. In business, government, media. What's more we have every conceivable instrument by which to do so. E-mails, Iphones, texting, twittering and whatever new nanosecond widget they come up with. On the other and slower hand, poets and philosophers are always talking about the gift of time. Good point. So lets put an even finer point on it. The gift of waiting.
Today's fast-tracking, instant-gratification Chicagoans are supposedly in a 24/7 state of fulfillment. Whatever we want, we get. Stock reports, business data, weather and sport updates, answers to questions, questions for answers, a perpetual Facebook-Society in which there's no waiting for anything. But wait here with me for a moment....
Neuroscientists remind us our brains aren't designed to function anywhere near as fast as our technologies. That suggest a reason. God and/or Evolution did this for a purpose. Psychology 101 in any college in town can provide the fast-moving movers-and-shakers in town with an answer -- waiting time is not wasted time!
Just as in the world of Yellowstone important things are quietly happening in-between the big geysers and fires, so is it in the busy world of Chicago. Especially in the busy world of our minds. While unnoticed bubblings and seedlings help make Yellowstone what it is, small pauses and reflections help make us what we are.
Waiting for an important personal letter...waiting for the results to a test or an interview....waiting for the answer to our love...waiting for an answer to our prayer. These ticks of time are hardly wasted time. Hopes, doubts, reassessments, corrections are being processed. The space between A and B, the ticks between now and then, these are all misty lands the mind travels in ways we may not quite understand. And yet traveling them -- taking the time to travel them -- is what helps determine our destinations. Be they the answers to our questions or our questions to the answers.
Maybe, Chicago, it all comes down to what the few farmers still left in our state tend to say.about the crops they're waiting for. What will be will be. In the meantime -- in the waiting time -- there are important things to do. Just don't rush me!
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It's an interesting idea you pose...as one who NEVER liked to wait for anything....but now that we do live in a "get everything NOW" society, I can see how it has become a lost art. Very interesting!
ReplyDeleteGlad you took the time to find it "very interesting." Now if there are a few million more like us, things just might slow down enough to become a little better. Whattaya say...?
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