Isn’t it true that as technology goes on integrating with our lives, we find that a measure for progress and lifestyle has turned into a craving for more and more speed? If we look at our cities, our traffic, our life, our people, our work, everything has increased speed incorporated into it. From zero to hundred in two seconds, acquiring speed has become a new style statement, but at what cost? From my perspective, this uncontrollable and unquenchable thirst for speed is the root of our many problems. Take for instance the problem of road rage and increased loss of lives due to speeding. Everyone seems to be in a hurry. But the purpose is missing in such a rush. Do we ever pave the way for an ambulance that has got a genuine reason for hurrying up and consequently speed since a question of someone’s life is involved? We are acting as if we are the saviors of the world where our every second is invaluable. That is why we have quite a penchant for speedy cars, speedy mobiles, speedy apps, speedy lives and what not.
I want to make one thing clear. I am not against speed. Time has value. Everyone’s time is important. There is however a clear distinction between true value and haste. Everyone is so involved in getting to their goals in a speedy way, that taking short cuts has become the norm rather than the exception. There is no doubt that there is a rise in crime, a rise in social inequality, a rise in injustices, a rise in wrong doings, just because everyone is hell bent on taking the short cuts to success. There is no room for struggle, perseverance, no respect for process and method and no respect for the right way. Gaining instant success has become the mantra of the world and everyone is so engrossed into it. Why? Have the qualities like doing hard work and waiting for the right moment become akin to donkey labor? Why we as a civilization are in such a hurry?
Oh, this place is so slow! The pace of life here is so laid back. Everyone in this town is so passive! How many times we have heard such comments coming from the dwellers of large metropolitan cities who when visit a small town or city cannot adjust to the slower pace of life there. Speed has become a new measure of progress. If one is not in a hurry then one is not having important priorities in life and therefore one is a sloth. There is a huge difference between being a sloth and in being a sensitive person. Why is that in our speed and hurry we have forgetting how to live and how to enjoy life? Why is that by our speedier modes of transportation, we have become much more connected and yet the distances have grown much wider? In an era where messages can literally be send at the speed of thought via email and one can communicate with other fellow human beings living in a far distant land, why there are still various clashes of cultures and there is no regard for fostering understand, faith, hope and brotherhood?
Why don’t we sleep well at night? There is this inexhaustible need for connectivity and speed that is keeping us glued to our mobiles and tablets. There is an ever growing hunger for more speed and more connections, more Facebook friends and more followers, but we find ourselves with little to say to them once we have such kind of a following. We have lost our connection with the mother earth just simply we have become blind and insensitive due to our zest for speed. That is the cause of unbridled materialism and environmental degradation that is causing problems on a global scale. Be it the problem of new incurable diseases popping up and creating havoc, the age old problem of hunger and malnutrition and the enormity of the problem of climate change and the serious risks associated with it, I feel humanity needs to slow down.
There is a need for all of us to stop and pause for a while. Pause from this blind race which is taking us to places but in the process we are forgetting and getting cut off from our roots. We need to sit back and relax. We need to admire beauty all around us. We need to become less of robots and machine like and more the way humans are, the way we were originally programmed to be by the Almighty. Why are there no feelings left in us? Why have we become so cruel and narrow minded? Why do we have zero tolerance for alternative and opposing views? Where has the love and compassion evaporated? We as men really need to stop and introspect. With everything in our civilization based on neck breaking speed and blind races against ourselves, how long are we going to sustain like this? Not for long I bet.
There is a need for all of us to ponder over the question of life and its fragility. There is a need for us to acknowledge the fact that we are not going to be here forever and everyone has a limited time to love, grow and enjoy. Why then waste such precious time on neck breaking speed which doesn’t achieve us anything? There is a time to relax and to enjoy the beauty of nature and our lives. Where ever speed is genuinely needed, there it’s a part of beauty itself, but when our increased obsession with speed comes at a time when we need more introspection and be less machine like, where we need more sensitivity than haste or greed, at that moment in time will we realize that there is more to life than just speed. Life has been given to us so that we live and serve our purpose on this earth, not for us to engage in a mind numbing exercise and pursuit of speed that has left us with no value or sensitivity. Let us all pause for a while, and wonder, where we are rushing to, and then after a deep introspection, choose our paths leading to love and compassion, without any haste. After all, speed is a virtue, only those who can appreciate it truly, it is not a mass commodity to be served on a platter for the masses to become robotic. Enjoy and do comment what you think about this topic.