On slowing down amid life's hurries
Three minutes or so with Ben Krimmel
And now, a few minutes with Ben Krimmel.
Have you noticed how no matter where you look everyone is in a rush these days?
Whether it be in movies or television shows or even the commercials between those television programs. Or maybe it is your own friends who are the kind of people who are always hustling themselves off to the next activity.
Even nowadays when seemingly nothing is happening, people seem determined to stack multiple activities back-to-back and make themselves pressed for time. And when they’re with you, they make you feel pressed for time.
These over-schedulers are always the ones who become the most perturbed by some hiccup causing even a momentary delay: a late-arriving train, a long line at the checkout counter, a slow-moving barista, or a crowded intersection.
I don’t like most of you hurries and you’re everywhere.
Where does this feeling come from that suddenly what you are doing at this exact moment requires the urgency of solving the airflow problem on Apollo 13? It’s awful.
Perhaps it started with everyone telling us that time is money. Which is ridiculous. Time isn’t money, money is money. Time is the currency of our souls. And it disturbs me so many of you folks feel the need to spend so much of that currency by constantly rushing through life.
Society would be much better if more people felt like they didn’t need to constantly have such a bee in their bonnet. Unfortunately, the people who told us ‘time is money’ — the ones who react to any detour on the road of life with an avalanche of consternation — control most of our schedules. They’re our bosses.
It shouldn’t take a general strike, but a pushback against their ‘step on it’ attitude could do the trick and get more of our lives back to the right tempo. It would allow America to rediscover the joys of being forced to slow down.
Remember the delayed satisfaction of surfing the internet which only came from waiting for a dialup connection? You could build your day around that wait. I knew somebody who would always make a sandwich during the time his computer took to connect to the internet. That seemed smart.
I miss those intentionally slow mechanisms that grind your life to a screeching halt. Like a car with crank windows. To be liberated from life by an inconvenience can be quite enjoyable. Like sitting in a traffic jam when you don’t really have any place to go.
I don’t know if you’re like me or not, you probably aren’t. And if I’m you think I am wrong, write to me.
Of course, I won’t be able to respond to your counter. I have far too many things I must go do.
Ben Krimmel is a writer from Baltimore.
This is the first piece in the ‘Three minutes or so’ series. (Which is, of course, an homage.)