A Hurried World – Sunday, April 01, 1984
We live in a hurried world where there never seems to be quite enough time. The days and weeks melt behind us as we rush through life frantic and breathless. We like our food fast and our stops quick, and if there is any way to cram more into our days as we would into a too-full suitcase, we try. We tell ourselves that when this pressure has passed, this job is finished—then we’ll slow down and live.
We’ve even learned to hurry our children. The first question we ask a youngster is “What are you going to be when you grow up?” We spend their first few years preparing them to read to do well in school. During elementary years we have an eye on getting them ready for high school, and in high school we worry about college. The push is always for tomorrow.
Yet in a very real sense, it is only the present moment that is ours. Tomorrow never comes, for when it is upon us it has become today with all the pressure and immediacy. If we wait for a mythical tomorrow, when we can live fully in the present moment, we may find that we miss it all. As Richard L. Evans said, “This is life, and it is passing. What are we waiting for?”1
Time rushes onward, silent and unresting. Nothing is swifter nor more relentless. If we are too hurried today to live as we want to, there are no guarantees that tomorrow will be different.
Joseph Addison observed, “Though we seem grieved at the shortness of life in general, we are wishing every period of it at an end. The minor longs to be at age, then to be a man of business, then to make up an estate, then to arrive at honors, then to retire.”2 And then, we would add, to be young again.
Today is the only day we have, and once it has gone, we can never have it back. If we run so quickly it blurs before us, perhaps we need to consider why we run. Maybe it’s time to realize there is more to life than increasing its speed.
1 Evans, Richard L., Richard Evans’ Quote Book, Publishers Press, p. 105.
2 Ibid, p.104.
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April 01, 1984
Broadcast Number 2,850