Hundreds, maybe thousands of commutes, travels and urgent errands fill the days. Weeks become a pile of years in little time. All the while the view at 65 mile speeds is very limited, making details virtually impossible to discover, or at least easy to ignore. The disabling snowstorm or the traffic-stopping accident however, immediately alters our perspective and forces us to observe life in slower motion. The newness of the slow-moving scenery now makes us wonder if this is actually the same familiar route we have traveled day after day!
Is fast always better than slow? Does too busy have to crowd out everything else? Just because household activities are not visible at high speeds, doesn't mean that they don't exist, or that they are irrelevant. I wonder if in fact, the more important events are taking place just off the thruway, obscured from the view of driven drivers.
Life starts in slow motion, and it appears to end in slow motion. How tragic that it is usually only at these extremes that the beauty of life and its importance are seen and appreciated.
I marvel at the connection that takes place between a grandfather and his grandchild. What do they possibly have in common? Perhaps one answer is their pace. Their speeds and needs, for a small moment in time, are designed to intersect. One slows, while the other grows. For a time they walk in the same lane at the same speed and value the same scenery. But soon their paths will take a new direction. One will pull off at the exit, while the other eagerly joins the highway of life at 65 miles per every hour.
