Our Pace of Life

"There is more to life than increasing its speed" - Mohandas Gandhi

It doesn't take a journalism major to know that if you only read the first few paragraphs or even the headline of a news article, you have the vital information. Lately, I have been using this trick of the inverted pyramid of news writing, to speed up my daily news fix. The faster I read, the more information I get. This might be the truth if I honestly budget my news reading time allotted for the day, but I don't. I don't really schedule my days to minute, or even to the hour. As hard as it is, I try (very hard) to live each moment of everyday to it's fullest.

Yesterday, a friend of mine who visited New York City this past weekend mentioned that she felt like everyone in the city just rushed around like they had somewhere to be. The image that was painted into my mind was a busy street filled with people, who just wanted time to sit and relax. I imagined myself running through this busy street just looking for a coffee shop, a library or a restaurant to just sit and take some time to think.

I felt for a long time, and still sometimes do, that if I race around faster than I did the day before and fill my schedule with work and activities, that the time to relax and enjoy myself will come sooner and will be more appreciated. I don't think that this is true at all. The faster, I race the more time I have to occupy with other things. Other things that do not involve enjoying myself. So why not enjoy myself all the time and stop racing away from what really is not all that bad.

As George Hallas says: "It's only work if there's someplace else you'd rather be." So if you just stop running through life thinking about everything you would rather be doing, you might realize that you enjoy what you have been labeling as "work".