Slow DOWN!!!!

Philosophy Forums Philosophy
1

"Too many people put off something that brings them
joy just because they haven’t thought about it , don’t have it on
their schedule, didn’t know it was coming or are too rigid to depart
from their routine.

I got to thinking one day about all those people on
the Titanic who passed up dessert at dinner that fateful night in an
effort to cut back. From then on, I’ve tried to be a little more
flexible. How many women out there will eat at home because
their husband didn’t suggest going out to dinner until after
something had been thawed? Does the word “refrigeration” mean nothing
to you?

How often have your kids dropped in to talk and sat
in silence while you watched ‘Jeopardy’ on television?
I cannot count the times I called my sister and
said, “How about going to lunch in a half hour?” She would gas up and
stammer, “I can’t. I have clothes on the line. My
hair is dirty. I wish I had known yesterday, I had
a late breakfast, It looks like rain.” And my personal
favorite: “It’s Monday.” She died a few years ago. We never did have
lunch together.

Because we cram so much into their lives, we
tend to schedule our headaches… We live on a sparse diet
of promises we make to ourselves when all the conditions are
perfect!

We’ll go back and visit the grandparents when we get
Steve toilet-trained. We’ll entertain when we replace the
living-room carpet. We’ll go on a second honeymoon when we get
two more kids out of college.

Life has a way of accelerating as we get older. The
days get shorter, and the list of promises to ourselves gets
longer. One morning, we awaken, and all we have to show for our
lives is a litany of “I’m going to,” “I plan on,” and “Someday, when things are settled down a bit.”

When anyone calls my ‘seize the moment’ friend, she
is open to adventure and available for trips. She keeps an
open mind on new ideas. Her enthusiasm for life is contagious. You
talk with her for five minutes, and you’re ready to trade your bad
feet for a pair of Rollerblades and skip an elevator for a
bungee cord.

My lips have not touched ice cream in 10 years. I
love ice cream. It’s just that I might as well apply it directly to
my stomach with a spatula and eliminate the digestive process. The
other day, I stopped the car and bought a triple-decker. If my
car had hit an iceberg on the way home, I would have died happy.

Now…go on and have a nice day. Do something you
WANT to…not something on your SHOULD DO list. If you were going
to die soon and had only one phone call you couldmake, who would
you call and what would you say? And why are you
waiting?

Make sure you read this to the end; you will
understand why I sent this to you.Have you ever watched kids playing on a merry go round or listened to the rain lapping on
the ground? Ever followed a butterfly’s erratic flight or gazed at
the sun into the fading night? Do you run through each day on the
fly? When you ask “How are you?” Do you hear the reply?

When the day is done, do you lie in your bed with
the next hundred chores running through your head? Ever told your
child, “We’ll do it tomorrow.” And in your haste, not see his sorrow?
Ever lost touch? Let a good friendship die? Just call to say
“Hi”?

When you worry and hurry through your day, it is
like an unopened gift…Thrown away… Life is not a race. Take it
slower. Hear the music before the song is over."

(my friend sent me this and I wanted you all to read it)

2

I enjoyed the post just for that message.

What you’re talking about is existentialism as I see it. However, the one problem is that we need to pursue without hesitation healthy things. So, we need to have good judgment and long-term thinking skills.

Mostly, we aren’t on the Titanic, so if we do eat all of the dessert we’ll find ourselves living the life of a beached whale stuck on the cold and lonely North shores of despair, or ah, something. So, what I suggest is that we get daring and extreme with relationships.

How many people on the Titanic could have sampled their fellow as if he or she where dessert, I ask you?

3

When you are young, you don’t have time to “smell
the roses” you have places to go, things to do, and people
to see. When you are older 30-60, you have kids needing to
go the the mall and to school and visiting friends.
Work, the boss needed that report yesterday and
commuting is getting longer and longer,
and shopping for groceries and doing the laundry
takes up what little free time we have, and one
day, you wake up and you begin to think of where you
are going to retire to, and you wonder what happened to
all those years. They seem to have passed by so quickly.
So you promise yourself, this year is the year you are
doing something you always wanted, like a trip to Europe,
and something comes up and it becomes next year, and soon
its time to retire and you can’t really afford to travel because
you couldn’t save up the money needed, and then one day
the years catch up with you. You don’t see that day when you are
young, but you do when you are older. I am closer, far closer,
to my last day then I am to my first day.
I wonder what I missed during my years of rushing around
when I was younger.

Kropotkin

4

This is going to turn into the official golden oldies thread, I’d better scarper…

5

someoneisatthedoor:This is going to turn into the official golden oldies thread, I’d better scarper…"

K: notice the term, Golden oldies, not silver or bronze, but golden.
Our role and place in the sun is “GOLDEN” Thanks for asking.

the GOLDEN oldie Kropotkin

6

I have always been that person that eats the top of the cupcake last because the icing is my favorite part. I like to enjoy life and all it has to offer. I put off annoying errands and tasks in lieu of more interesting options. You could call it procrastination. I prefer to think of it as savoring.

Bessy, this looks like the type of thing my dad always has me read whenever I pass by his desk. I am emailing it to him for the sheer beauty of the message. Thanks.

7

:wink:

8

i morn the loss of people’s time and i hear it all the time. bad health stops me from doin jack shit. damn rat race. i hear about it often(IMO) and it disturbs me.

i think bessy is right,to those of us that CAN do it anyhoo.

9

When I was seventeen, I remember thinking I wanted to stay as carefree and impulsive that way for the rest of my life. I have always tried to see things from the point of view of a ninety year old. How do I want to feel looking back and did I want to have regrets or did I want to throw myself into trying new things. You have to have responsibility in life, but not to the exclusion of your own dreams and passion. Life gives your your knocks, but the more times you stop and smell the roses the more full your life will be.

All those years when women in my neighborhood had perfect houses, perfect outfits, clean garages, and spent hours making sure they had matching hairbows on their little girls… I, my friend, was playing the piano.

When these women were at the mall, I was making pizza dough with my kids or taking them on hikes in the woods or building sheet forts that we would keep up and live in for weeks. My kids were allowed R&R days from school when they “just didn’t feel like going.” We spent hours learning family song & dance routines and had plays, practicing endlessly when they came home from school. They rode plastic sleds down the stairs into pillows for fun and their rooms were their OWN. If they wanted their rooms to be messy - WHO CARES? I didn’t.

I was too busy singing and playing the piano. :smiley:

Now they are grown and my house is too neat. Guess who my kids want to hang out with? Me.

#-o I wonder why.

10

I guess it’s possible to ‘miss’ some experiences, but it never occurred to me that I should do anything other than deal with what was in front of me at the moment. Work, family, advocations and all the other various roles we inhabit over our lives come as they come, and we do the best we can with them at the time. I can’t say I regret any of the things I’ve experienced other than sometimes thinking I should have done a better job with them. Our experiences are what they are, and as long as we learn from each of them, then we must be doing something right. The grass is always greener somewhere else, and it is always true that being in one place also says where you are not. Have I ‘missed’ opportunites? Without a doubt. Does it make any difference? Nope. Like most other people, I’m doing the best I can, and that has to be enough.

It really makes no difference how old you are. The nostalgia trip can be taken at any age. The issue is always the same: Are you alive? Paying attention? Doing the best you know how? That is a life without regrets.

JT

11

I loved this. Thanks, Mr. T.