Three Ways to Slow Down the Journey
“Don’t blink, son, because the older you get, the faster time goes. Before you know it, you’ll be old and ready to pass the last horizon.”
I’ve been told something like that about every other month by some older person who’s willing to share their well seasoned wisdom.
And it’s true, isn’t it?
The older we get the faster time goes. The speed of time seems directly correlated to our age. Here are my theories … I have a couple of them because I think they’re all related and all a bit true:
1.) With age, comes responsibility, with responsibility comes busyness and with busyness comes the quickened pace of time.
2.) The older we get, the better we get at life and so the faster we go. It’s like a mountain biker struggling to get down through the obstacles of life, and all of a sudden he gets to the bottom of the hill and there’s an open road.
Life — as we learn how to maneuver it — is full of obstacles, but once we begin to learn the basic principles, life starts to flatten out into a smooth, flat course that we can flat out race upon. Okay, so maybe it’s not a straight road, but I think you can understand what I’m saying.
3.) The older we get, the more situated we become and the more we can just go about life using habits. Habits, for the most part, are things that can produce mind death and with mind death, comes time speed.
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WHAT DO YOU DO IF YOU WANT TO SLOW TIME DOWN? DO THE OPPOSITE OF THE ABOVE!
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1.) Become less busy. This is so hard and so anti-American because in order to do this you have to leave some of your responsibilities.
2.) Do things that are hard and going to cause you to struggle. What are you not good at?
Are you bad at dancing? Take dancing lessons. Are you awful at writing? Start writing. Are you anti-social? Go to a party or a small group at church.
3.) Start learning again. Take a college course … or go back to college to get a new degree. You can do it!
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Slowing down the journey, trying new things, embracing difficulty, might just be the prescription to slowing down the speed of time.