The Horizon

I am still obsessed with the preceived speed of life, and how to slow it down. Like driving a car, the gas pedal is the skinny one, but easy to find. The brake pedal is the wide one, big enough to jump on with both feet. But yet it is still hard to find the brakes. We have deadline after deadline to meet, so we keep our eye on the next hurdle. There is a long straight stretch on my way to work. If you focus on a spot on the horizon, movement doesn't really register. You pick another spot closer in, and you start to notice a faster change. You look at the road in front of you and the dotted line goes flying by you. In all three cases you are traveling the same speed, but with three totally different perceptions. If we are engaged with life's tug of war match, and constanly pulling on the rope, then of course the next hurdle is going to come at you faster. If the hurdle comes faster, then life moves faster. I recently spent week out of work recovering from surgery. During that week, I had to let go of the rope. The hurdles stop coming. I could look up at the horizon, at least for a moment. At that time I didn't find the brakes, they found me. Ever so often, they have a tendency to that.