Everything is fast. Express. Quick. Speedy. Minute Rice.
What happened to "good things come to those who wait?" Is that even a thing anymore? Are we all just trying to jam so much shit into our days that we can't even take a moment to eat a good meal... or take a shit? We need to microwave food instead of heating it in the oven. 5 minute abs. Fast food. The list is endless.
Couldn't we start to enjoy and boast about how long we did something for? Or how much time we had to do something? Like to cook up a meal that took over an hour, we don't think of that as incompetence. We would look at it like a feat and then immediately the thought would be, "Damn, it's got to be tantalizing."
Wouldn't it make sense to look at any "express" mart or Quick this/that/the other as something that cut some corners? There's probably something not all that great about minute rice or some other microwavable garbage that's sitting in the depths of my freezer. Going to the express mart is going to have an underwhelming amount of overpriced options and heating up the poisonous freezer burnt food in the microwave will ruin our insides. Just take your tiiiime.
We're rushing to get out of bed, rushing to get to work, rushing to get more work done than we can reasonably handle, then we rush to get lunch, rush to be back, rush to the gym, rush to get home, rush to have dinner, rush to get into bed. Fuuuuuck all the rushing. All for what? To do it again tomorrow? To get more in on a day than the person next to you? What happened to the quality over quantity debate? Would you rather have your house built in a couple days or would you rather they took their time and did everything right, yet it took 6 months? I'd lean towards the latter. There's a saying that…"You can have it done fast, you can have it done cheap, and you can have it done well… but you can only pick 2." If it's going to be done quick and well, it won't be cheap. If you want it cheap and fast, it won't be good. If you want it cheap and good…it's not going to be fast.
If we're all taught patience at an early age, or at least start to understand it, then why are we all stuck trying to get to some destination quicker than anyone else? And do you even know the destination? To be totally transparent…I do not. There's no idea where this train is taking me, but one thing is for sure…I'm in no rush to get there. What's the point of rushing around? Just to get to the next thing? It only makes you anxious, stressed, and annoyed at your fellow human. How can you stop to smell the roses if you're too busy going 90 down the interstate and cussing out anyone going remotely close to the speed limit? Fuck outta the way, gramps, I need to get to where I'm going…so that I can get to the next place. Unless you're going to save a life directly, slow down.
Why is it called "rush hour?" I cannot, for the life of me, make sense of this expression. If we're all rushing to get to work, wouldn't we rush there earlier? Would we rush to get caught in the massive traffic jam? Is it because the people that left 2 hours before work begins are considered "rushing" to get to work and now there's an hour of which they're stuck? What's considered rushing? What's the actual definition?
Rush - To move with urgent haste
Okay, so is sitting in your car in bumper to bumper traffic for 2 hours considered "urgent haste?" I'd argue that if you were driving through the traffic, zigging and zagging, using the breakdown lanes, not taking other people's lives into account.…well, THAT would be urgent haste. But listening to my podcast, sipping on coffee, and pondering about the deep questions of life is by NO MEANS "urgent haste." I'd say it's casual bustling.
Let's slow down a little bit. Let's talk to our friends and family a bit more. Let's realize that whatever is "urgent" on your desk, is nothing you'll remember a couple days or weeks from now. If your life was on the line, would we consider it urgent? If your wife was about to have a child in the hospital, would you consider that same task urgent? Would you be rushing to get all of your work done so that you could go see your newborn? Are you going to shovel down your lunch so that you can get back work? The question probably boils down to this - what are the hourly, daily, and long term priorities?
Is your family life a priority? Is the upkeep of your home a priority? Is making sure that your boss is happy a higher priority than those? What about your health? Is your long-term health going to take priority over work sometimes? I would certainly hope so. How many of those protein shakes that make your farts smell like Brussel sprouts mixed with skunk urine can you drink before you shit out an organ? Maybe it's okay to spend a few extra minutes cooking up some quality food, or waiting a little longer for the steak to cook instead of microwaving some flash frozen trash. How much "fast food" can you eat before all the visceral fat in your body clogs your arteries? Do you really want to find out?
This all spun off a thought that I had when I was getting gas. There was a sign that said "Uno's Express" at the gas station and I couldn't help but think, "Who the fuck is eating that trash? Why can't people just wait a few minutes to get to where they're going and eat some actual food?" Obviously it isn't like the Uno's we used to go to because that gas station attendant doesn't have near as much of the culinary prowess that those cooks do. Even if they did, they wouldn't disrespect the pizza to a point that they cooked it in a gas station. Just cut out the express and go to the real Uno's, unless you want worms. Because that's how you get worms.