Why are some people in such a hurry for no reason?
We stopped by the Stop & Shop in Provincetown, after doing some laundry. We had a few things to get and then off to the beach. What puzzled us was the intense stress level of the other shoppers, who seemed to be in a rush for some reason. There was the usual crap that seems to be part of human behavior - line-humping, for example (which as we know, makes the line go faster!).
The other day, Mark stopped in the same store for about $10 worth of stuff and the cashier grabbed his card and jammed it in the reader - on a tap-to-pay machine! I have learned that chip-reader terminals, particularly the well-worn kind at grocery stores, as sensitive, and you have to carefully slide the card in and let it do its thing. If you put it in at an angle, it gets an intermittent contact and generates a "bad card" error message.
So anyway, the clerk - like most employees in this resort town, from Bulgeria - kept jamming the card in and banging on the terminal - with predictable effects. The homeless bum behind Mark in line (who no doubt, has many urgent errands to run!) shouted at Mark, "Why don't you just pay cash and avoid all this trouble?"
Everyone is in a hurry.
And the problem is, it is contagious. We were struggling to strap in our groceries onto our bicycles and Mark was pushing me to hurry it up as the other bicyclists were jamming their groceries in and taking off, as if this was a leg of the Tour de France and they needed to get back in the race. I kind of lost it.
"Look," I said, "I'm not going to drop $50 of groceries all over the ground because of some manufactured 'hurry'! We have no place to be, no place to go, and have all the time in the world - as I suspect most of these idiots do as well. Let me pack this stuff carefully, so we don't drop a dozen eggs on the ground!"
And he relented. It is easy to get caught up in the "rat race" as the other lemmings rush off the cliff. City folks are worst at this, and most of the tourists in this town are from big cities (New York, Boston) as that's the only people who can afford to pay $50 for an entree or $35 for a lobster roll.
But it got me to thinking and us to talking. Mark noticed the level of panic at the "Stop & Shop" - whose very name seemed to decry casual shopping. More like a pit stop at NASCAR. We've seen this in other venues as well - such as rest stops, where people feel the need to rush in and out, so they can "win" at urinating, I guess.
Haste makes Waste, and I realize that in life, when mistakes are made, it is usually because someone was in a hurry - and there was no real reason to be in a hurry, either. There was no deadline, or if there was, there was plenty of time to get things done, but of course, we procrastinate. When you drop a bag of groceries on the floor, it is usually because you were trying to carry too much and not being careful. And in most cases, there was no need for haste.
I talked about this before - living in the future. We want to fast-forward through "boring" parts of life, and get to the good parts. On the way home from work, our minds are already home and thinking about what to do to relax and have fun after a day at the office. Mentally, we are already home, but still have 10 miles to drive. So we hurry and don't pay attention and very, very bad things happen. If you analyze most car accidents, they occur because someone was trying to "save time" and I suspect that in 99.99% of cases, they had no reason to hurry.
It is like the guy who "brake checks" an 18-wheeler. He's in a hurry and is pissed-off the truck is taking so long to pass! He is in a hurry, but has the time to dick around with a 50,000lb truck, engage in road-rage, or just get run over. The point is, he wasn't in that much of a hurry, was he? If he was, he would pass the truck and move on with life.
We race through life toward the grave, it seems, as the above video shows. But I am not sure that playing more video games is the real answer. In fact that and other time-wasters (such as watching television or blogging) are just fill-ins to keep you occupied while you race toward oblivion. It is like commuting, as I just noted, a time-waster designed to fill up your life and what some people secretly covet as their favorite time of day - the time when they can be alone, in charge of this powerful machine, and set the radio station where they want it. Drive-time radio was so lucrative back in the day, as a result. Today, I guess people listen to podcasts while they work from home.
As I get older, I need more time to get things done, simply because I can't rush around like a young person. Well, I can, but I end up dropping the eggs. But there is something more than that, too. I have no desire to rush things, and I want to live in the moment, even if the moment is just picking out which heads of garlic to buy. The younger me would be surely pissed to be in line behind older me.
Funny thing, though, younger me had no pressing business and no place to be and literally all the time in the world. Now that the days are running out, I don't want to rush through this last phase. I am in no race to the graveyard, thank you.
I don't know what the point of this is, but maybe it is a good idea to slow down a bit and think carefully about that you are doing - and live in the moment. The people who want to con you or steal from you - whether they are in a call-center in India, or a pickpocket on the subway, or a major corporation trying to rip you off - don't want you to live in the moment. They hope you are distracted - which is the magician's trick to deceive you. They hope you are thinking about something else and not your surroundings or immediate environment.
Maybe, just maybe, slow down and live a little!
