Why in Such a Hurry?
My daughter asked me why I walk so fast when we go for a stroll.
I told her that I got used to it. Shaped by the pace of the cities, where I became a body in motion, moving from point A to point B from Monday to Friday on repeat, looping.
I told myself that when I am walking, I am thinking about where I am going. I am not present. I am not just walking, I am walking somewhere. This “somewhere” is not here.
I have been walking “somewhere” instead of walking “here”.
First school on schedule, then work on schedule... while walking “somewhere”.
This “somewhere”, where is it? I have been “somewhere” for the last 41 years. I want to be “here”, but I see everyone walking “somewhere”, so I continue the walk.
Why do I think about Monday on Sunday, and about Friday on Thursday?
Always “somewhere”, not “here”.
I have fallen into a pattern and mistaken it for my identity.
My pattern is a result of reacting, same stimulus, same route, same Monday.
How do I transition from reacting to a stimulus, to responding to it?
Stimulus → Reaction.
Stimulus → Breath → Response.
Breath creates the pause. The pause creates the space. The space between stimulus and response is where I experience autonomy, growth, and freedom.
Harold Kushner, in the foreword to Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning, writes:
Life is not primarily a quest for pleasure, as Freud believed, or a quest for power, as Alfred Adler taught, but a quest for meaning. The greatest task for any person is to find meaning in his or her life.
Do I find meaning or create it? Perhaps neither, perhaps I simply start noticing what was always present.
I was looking for “here” while standing in it.
I realised that the object of my search has been right here all along, not “somewhere”.
My daughter asked me why I walk so fast. Maybe she has been here the whole time.