Why The Rush?

Everyone seems to be in such a rush.

But don't have anything much to do. Always "busy" and holding no patience, but spend tens of hours a week scrolling through inane feeds that provide no value. What is the point of rushing with nowhere to be?

Do you have somewhere to be?

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You'd think that with all of these convenience aids that help us do everything, we'd have more time on our hands to just relax, yet the opposite seems to be true. And because we have so much available on-demand, when we want it, our ability to remain calm and patient if "forced" to wait for anything, whether in traffic and someone is slow off the line at a red light, or if an old person at the supermarket is taking to long to pay, the frustration sets in.

All these technological helpers and we are losing our ability to accept human behaviour.

I find it a compelling problem, because if you talk to most people these days, they say they are trying to improve this or that, to be a better version of themselves. When they talk about the world, they see the problems, like rising crime in their area, political turmoil globally, or the way children are acting. But, drill down just a little and below that surface, most people have nothing concrete they are doing to improve the situation, and rarely even have any ideas. It is like they are going through the motions of caring, in the hope that no one asks them to demonstrate impact through actions.

Words without works.

It is understandable though, because not only have we been conditioned through our environment to work this way, but the same conditioning has disconnected us from a lot of the social landscape also. This means that we are far more focused on ourselves and we don't have to "prove anything" to anyone. Gone are the social consequences of being failing to meet expectations, or fulfil promises, or being flaky in general. It no longer matters what other people think of us, to our detriment.

Yet, here we are, rushing around running important errands of a non-descript nature that don't actually matter to us for more than a moment,. They seem life or death right now to the point that we get agitated if we get held up for a few seconds, but not long after, the moment has passed and we didn't even realise how unimportant it all was. We seem to keep putting ourselves in up and down cycles of emotional state, looking for the next reason to get our blood up and vent, like drug addicts looking for a way to avoid reality.

Daily life is important.

Our lives are shaped far more by our daily activity than the few big events, as is our experience. This is why someone can be in a car accident and lose their legs and a year later, be happier than they were before. It is because while the accident made a massive change, it also forced them to focus more on daily tasks, recovery, relationships, and getting back into the world. All these little things that we take for granted, suddenly became important.

What is important enough to justify screaming at a stranger?

As said many times before, I find human behaviour fascinating. And while I meet a lot of people who want to influence others, most of those people are trying to do it in ways that are unlikely to move the needle in the direction they want, because they don't want to understand how people work, or how they make their decisions. Instead, they want to get what they want as fast as possible, without considering what is required to speed up the process.

Stop rushing.

Change takes time.

Yes, some changes happen incredibly fast, but for the most part, behavioural change takes time. It takes time if we want to enact it in others, it takes time if we want to shift it in ourselves. Not only does it take time though, it also takes practice and repetition and adjustment, and that requires patience. When we don't have patience, we don't have the ability to be effective agents of positive change, because we are going to give up before the desired change has a chance to take root. We will tell ourselves we tried but it didn't work, but the reality is most of the time, we didn't try hard enough for long enough.

Patience really is a virtue.

We should hurry up and get some, before its all gone.

Taraz [ Gen1: Hive ]

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