Tuesday, January 30, 2007

As time...

...goes by. ("As Time Goes By", Casablanca, Warner Brother Studios, 1931.)

This idea came to me as I sat at Starbucks and watched an elderly gentleman cross the street and walk down the sidewalk. It does not hold true universally, but here in a flourishing and safe-ish area, with security both physically and financially keeping us comfortable, the American dream life--from infant to elder--seems to surround me.

Isn't it funny, how when we're quite small, we live each moment through, enjoying even the most mundane of tasks, depending only on the company we can keep in the process, and never in a hurry for anything--because we've got all the time in the world.

Then, when we're in our teens and twenties, we have to rush so much to accomplish all the ridiculous jobs and chores we've set for ourselves. Overlapping and multitasking in a frantic attempt to complete, achieve, total, produce, finish.

But when we finally reach the maturity of the seventies, eighties, and so on, we enjoy each step for its own sake, take our sweet time to complete (or not) every simple task, and meet our buddies for coffee without needing to rush off and only visit for the half hour we crammed into our schedule-books.

It seems to me--at the age of business--that the beginning and ending people have it the best. I suppose many of the things we insist on accomplishing, or at least the manner in which we accomplish them, are unnecessary. But it also falls on us, the old-enough-and-young-enough crowd, to make it possible for the others to enjoy their time.

What a sweet reward for our efforts! Because here in America we are nearly assured to get to enjoy the rushing of others when we reach that maturity and slowing down. And for now, our rushing blesses others. Besides which, we are full of life and ideas and reasons why, a fountain from which the younger people have not drunk, and the older people have had their fill.

Ironic isn't it?

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