Sometimes We Just Move Too Fast

I just finished watching Cars... Yeah, the animated, G rated flick put out by Pixar... Yeah, I know I'm a single 37 year old male who happens to be sitting alone watching a "kid" movie... I know, I know, I need a life, and I'm working on it...

Anyhooo... there was one point in the movie when they were explaining what happened to Route 66, and all the little towns that straddled it before the huge expansion of the interstate system that got me thinking. Sometimes, we are just in too big of a hurry in this country.

I don't mean just the act of driving across it, though that is definitely a great example. But this plague is striking at every part of our day to day lives now. We are either in a hurry to "get on with life" and start making our killings in the business world, or in a hurry to have kids and get the family started, or in a hurry to hit the bar before last call for alcohol so we can manage to get through a night with a spouse we just can't stand. There are a million things we are in a hurry for, and not one of them makes most of us a damn bit happier than we were sitting on the sofa watching the Soprano's!

Or we are in a hurry to get gardens planted, flowers in the flower beds, the yard fertilized and the weed killers spread. I know these things need to be done, even that some people actually want to do them. But whatever happened to taking a walk on the first nice spring day and actually getting out of the house, out of the office, out of the cars, to just relax and enjoy the outdoors even if only for a couple of hours? Is it going to kill the garden dreams if it gets planted over two evenings instead of one? Are the flowers going to bloom a different damn color if they are planted two days late? Somehow I just don't think so.

I know we live in a culture that measures everything on what you have or don't have materialistically. What kind of car you drive, how nice the damn lawn is manicured, how much money did you make last week, month or year. I know we live busy lives and most of us are just managing to keep up. But I know something else, too. Taking that drive down Route 66 at 50 miles an hour rather than staying on the interstate at 70 may mean spending an extra hour or two to get to your destination. But I know for every minute you spend on Route 66 is an hour more you can manage to keep your sanity when you get back on the interstate of your life.