Faster

Most people around me are constantly busy, minute by minute, talking on cell phones or sending email from laptops or PDAs - espousing the credo of modern communication by obsessing over the exchange of trifling messages of limited substance that are further violated by the haste and thoughtlessness with which they are composed. Distracted and disengaged from their present surroundings and company, people proudly justify their half-hearted attention to matters at hand as multitasking - congratulating themselves on the eagerness and frequency of their replies rather than on their clear articulation.

Our constant accessibility has devalued our time and our focus. Every petty thought has become so important by the immediacy and wide distribution of it's broadcast that we are plagued by a constant sense of urgency over the superficial. In our eagerness to embrace our importance, we have made ourselves - and our time - inconsequential. If the many noisy interruptions of techno-availability are insufficient to reaffirm one's significance, further reassurance is only an outgoing phone call away.

All of the tools of modern communication would seem to operate as the fast-forward button through our own lives. The moments of our here and now have been mortgaged with voice mail and call-waiting. We need only excuse ourselves from the attention of those we have chosen to be with in order to address the incidental concerns of those we have chosen not to be with to avoid participating in our own lives.

I am not guiltless. I spend much time working, worrying and negotiating. I spend time feeling sorry for myself. I spend time driving or traveling or getting from one point to another, all the while wondering why so many other people are traveling at the same moment. Why are there so many people who aren't already where they want to be? Where are they going and do they wish they were already on their way back? It seems we are all wishing our lives behind us to arrive faster at a destination we will never reach.

I have spent much of my own life driving down the highway at top speed, always looking ahead, occasionally glancing in the rearview mirror. When life moves so quickly, it is difficult to make the time to pull off the road to look for a longer time at a smaller piece of the world while the other cars rattle past. What might I be missing while I'm stopped? What if a more interesting place lies only a bit further ahead? But what can one see from the driver's seat looking through the windshield at 60 miles per hour? I seem to experience the most of life only when the car breaks down and I am forced to stop unexpectedly. I sigh and complain and pout, and only then do I appreciate the stranger who stops to help or notice the view from beyond the shoulder of the road.

I'm considering how I spend my time. Staying up all night in the hope of completing one more task, hoping that, like a winning lottery ticket, it will be the one task that wins me the next project that will consume my all of my time and energy. If necessary, I will borrow more time from my future... from sleep, meditation and pleasures. I borrow it knowing it cannot be returned.

I spend every minute.

Life is precious and short. Every day is filled with the possibilities of small miracles - chance encounters and meetings between old friends. I regret every time I have impatiently waited for a conversation to end or avoided someone altogether. These moments happen by divine intervention and we can find something to appreciate about each one - even if it is only that life is precious and short.