Seeing Slower

Slow down!

You’re going too fast!

The bywords of the old to the young resonate in my ears of late.

I am driving slower these days, not because I want to, but because I’ve got way too many speeding tickets for anyone who wants to keep driving these beautiful country roads.  You’d think I’d see more, notice more, but I don’t.

I tend to live way too much in my head to notice the beauty around me unless I first slow down my thoughts and force myself to pay attention.

It’s a gift of the really young and the really old, this paying attention to the world around us business.

Young friends run head long into life.  Yet even at their warp speed, they manage to see everything – really see it all.  So the running child comes to full stop in a nanosecond to investigate the worm or leaf or ant or clump of oddly shaped dirt that has captured their attention, before running off to the next moment.

And my really old friends simply stop and look, taking it all in, savoring each sight as if it might be their last – because it might really be.

The first look and the last – each the richer for their uniqueness.

Why does everything in the middle get so easily taken for granted?

Because I don’t know, I slow down a bit today and stand with my old friend and simply gaze at the rain laden fog hanging suspended in the crease of one mountain folding into another.  We marvel together, arm in arm, and then move on, richer for the moment.

I think I like this seeing slower.