Would Someone Please Start an Institute for the Cultivation of Slowness?

Rushing is a way of life
We’re speed freaks
Yeah it’s a drug
Move the mind
Faster and faster
Get more done
Faster and faster
Our lives are one long Stair Master’s routine
The pace ever increasing
The intensity more than the week before
Go
Go!
Go!!
Go!!!
Day in
Day out

Up before dawn
Down after midnight
Keep moving
Keep going
Eyes on the prize
But the eyes get tired
Of trying to get a bead on
The blur that is our life
So accomplished
So ready to help out here
Put out a fire there
And this one
And that one
And, look, over there
Another job to be done
(“Somebody’s got to do it”–
And we know who that somebody always is)
Faster and faster
Keep up
(Everybody else is doing it)
Our faces only resurrected
When that triple espresso kicks in
But inside we know
“This is too much
I can’t do it”
But then it starts all over
The race is on
(It’s always on)
Don’t wanna be a loser
This life a 400 meter sprint
Perpetually repeated with a minute breather
Time for a vacation?
We might need two months just to decompress
Welcome to the land of all those Indispensable, time-saving technologies and devices that we now spend so much time on
There’s only so much energy
For the 47 emails in the in-box before 9 a.m.
For the 18 phone calls to return
To each person who considers his agenda
As having the highest PRIORITY and utmost URGENCY
Which must be dealt with NOW
(“Go on a retreat with Thich Nhat Hanh?
Maybe in 15 years…”)
Faster and faster
Check it off
Forget to take that deep breath
Wearier and wearier
The commercials proclaim:
“You can do it!”
(Our heart gasps:
“I can’t do it!”)
But look there
Happiness is right there on the horizon
127 tasks away