What is the rush?

Last night, I was taking my evening walk with a good friend.  As we proceeded to the crosswalk, a car appeared.  As in any country, the law is that if there is a pedestrian in a crosswalk, one must yield to the pedestrian.  Well, this man decided to speed up, almost running into us! We ended up surrounding his car, taking his license plate, and yelling at the guy.  The guy looked clueless. He would not roll his windows down to engage in conversation with us,. He then continued to yell at us, and shake his head,  behind the shield of his closed windows.  We yelled back at the man that we would report him to the police, and then he sped down the block, towards his home.

Thank G-d, we were OK. No harm done other than being scared of the ubiquitous “What if…” scenario. But, we kept walking, and soon forgot the incident, as we huffed and puffed our way through the workout.

As I returned home, and wrote the guy’s license plate number down, I realized that all too often we are rushing through life. We rush through meals, rush through conversations, rush through cleaning our homes, rush through writing emails, and even rush through visits with loved ones.  What is the constant rush? Where are we so eager to go?!?

Is it that our culture is so enthralled with the “next big thing” that we continuously rush through the here and now?  Does this reflect poorly upon our generation, if we cannot manage to enjoy life’s simple slow pleasures?  Will we ever appreciate the slow drip of a bottle of Canadian maple syrup? Or, will we continuously shake that bottle, ad nauseum, to make the flow run more readily for our needs?

Today’s local newspaper features an article titled “Israel pessimistic agreement will be reached by expiration of cease-fire at midnight” (Jerusalem Post, August 18, 2014).  The article continues to explain that if Hamas breaks the cease fire, the IDF will be forced to retaliate.  That is, the war will return to this war-torn region.

Now, the clock is ticking.  Will it be in Israel’s favor? Will the quiet remain?  It suddenly seems that we want time to stop.  We want the quiet to stay for a while.  We do not want to rush anywhere…we just want this peaceful status to last a bit longer…long enough for the kids to enjoy the summer a bit more….long enough to be able to smell the roses…  and long enough to envision a quasi-peaceful existence.  I am not rushing to find answers, and I pray that our leaders are doing the same.