Slow Down, You Move Too Fast

Apologies to Paul Simon and his 59th Street Bridge Song:

Slow down, you move too fast

You got to make the morning last

Just kicking down the cobblestones

Looking for fun and feeling groovy

Paul Simon, 59th Street Bridge Song

We have laptop on the lap. Amazon is so easy. Instead of getting off our butts and going to a store like millennia of shoppers, we click and buy. Next day, delivery.

I cannot for the life of me fathom why a 55-and-older community has so many people in a hurry. But as I go out for morning exercise, I cannot believe the number of speeding cars who also have not enough time to stop at a stop sign.

I just listened to an interview with Michael Easter, author of Scarcity Brain: Fix Your Craving Mindset and Rewire Your Habits to Thrive with Enough. He talked about staying for a while in a monastery and again staying with natives in the Arctic. He learned to slow down. Then he felt much better—mentally and physically.

Once I rushed everything I did. Perhaps it was Chicago traffic that helped cure that inner urge to rush. If you can’t go anywhere faster than 5 mph, then you just turn on some good music and chill.

Paul Simon had an image of just kicking down the cobblestones on the approach to the 59th Street Bridge in New York. We all need an image of slowing, taking it easy, feeling groovy. We can get our work done without raising a cloud of dust—and anxiety.

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