Ed. notes: While it’s always fun to decry our current tempest, the editors and I-wink, wink, nudge, nudge, know what I mean- have decided that for the sanity of our writer(s) we will offer other fun musings that focus on something other than our social ills from time to time.
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We interrupt this high point in American civility for a moment of personal reflection.
I’ve… I’ve lost my desire… to go fast, to speed, to race; however you want to say it. Maybe I’ve lost my nerve. I don’t know. I watch the people around me zipping from lane to lane and wonder…
Why?
You see the problem?
We’re not a society built on hanging back, going with the flow, any of that hippy-dippy stuff. Sure, there are a few folks out there that appear disinclined to the rapaciousness of our destructive creationism, but they’re outliers, freaks. I’m sure you know the types. We’re schooled to consume, to push forward, to drag our sorry asses through years of mind-numbingly repetitive tasks because it’s who we are dammit!
And, we must race from place to place! How else will we have the time to, to truly invest ourselves in these moments? It’s a conundrum to be sure. I, too, was a part of it for many years, but lately…
The desire has abandoned me.
For reasons I can’t adequately explain, I just can’t make myself go faster. I try to get out of the way of those in a hurry. I have no interest in keeping them from their appointed rounds, whether they have any ultimate importance or not. Who am I to impede them?
Now, some of you will see this as some age thing, or a byproduct of my ending 40 years of doing the same thing in order to do something else; writing, for example, but that, while clever, would be incorrect. I’ve felt this coming on for some time. I tried to fight it, to keep up, put the pedal to the metal and all that, but I couldn’t justify it. It seemed like…
…Like a waste of time!
It is the great answer to the question we come to a one point or another. At least those of us not driven to live forever. There are those who do, who fight the dying light of the day, to paraphrase Dylan Thomas, to rage against that which they will never control.
That’s for the best; certainly for the rest of us.
I am therefore left to watch as others race past me for that moment of glory in which they get to Costco first, or more importantly, to the next light on our common road to fulfillment. Or frustration: I am king of this stretch of road; all bow down before me.
I don”t know. Perhaps they’re late for their dental appointment. Perhaps their takeout delights are rapidly cooling. Perhaps their progeny are burning down the house or taking advantage of the situation to get in just one more stage or round of the game they’re playing before rushing to complete, however competently, whatever they were charged with completing.
You never know.
I just know my time is over. I will not curse you as you curse me. I will do, as I said before, my best to get the hell out of the goddamned way so you can…
Rush to whatever is more important that a moment of quiet, or contemplation, or, God forbid, a moment of contentment.
If you can’t do that, my quick fix suggestion is to turn off the news.
David William Pearce, Writer 