The Speed of Our Age

NOW THAT WE’VE BEEN forced to stop, it’s easier to see how speed thwarts us. For when we become entranced with how quickly things move, we stop listening to what matters. This is how worry feeds itself, how it fills us with psychic noise.

It’s especially difficult to hear what matters in our modern age. Given our preoccupation with efficiency and productivity, it takes a quiet courage to silence our worry and agitation when we’re always being told that we’re falling short.

To counter the speed of our age, we’re asked to open our heart wherever we are. Even though, in the press of the modern world, such softness and openness can be mistaken for being lazy, aimless, and without purpose. But sometimes we need to drift and be aimless, in order to disengage the frenzy of civilization and put down our worried agendas, so we can reconnect to the underlying reality that informs everything.