Don’t Forget To Slow Down
There will come a time when you’ll have to make a choice. A step forward. Or backward. You won’t be able to stay in the same mental space. Whether it’s from within or without, you’re likely to be forced if you don’t anticipate.
But how can you with the speed of things? How can you when by the time you close your eyes, the alarm clock rings?
You barely notice the sun. Or the birds. Or what’s in your food. You barely notice the color in the eyes of your conversation partner. Or the red in your whites in the mirror.
How then can you know it’s time?
Sometimes, and more often than not, it’s going to be a feeling; a genteel nudge into a certain frame of thinking.
What did I want to do when I was a child? Why do I not feel excited anymore? What is love? What is missing?
The question is not as important as the feeling. The anxiety. Uncertainty. The cold sweat on a freezing morning. You know you need to do something.
But …what?
That’s why you can’t afford to stray from your heart. You have to make time for yourself. To sit and think. To let the world pass while you stand still.
You have to let everyone hurry up while you slow down. You have to make the time to notice how red the sun is at dawn or how cold the shower gets just before it turns warm.
You have to make time to notice the new white strands on your parents aging head and the force with which air hits your lungs when you take the stairs.
Unless you make the time, the choice will be brutal. A stroke. An accident. You got fired. You got divorced. You fell on your walk to school or fainted mid-stride at the store.
It’s not only monks who need to meditate or journal. It’s not even a productivity hack.
It’s called the ‘present’ for a reason.
