Amara:
I LOVED your post. It echoes something I've come to appreciate in the last
couple of years, especially the last few months; that is that consciously
cultivating behavior aimed at a SLOWER pace has substantial benefits in many
aspects of my life. In particular, I've come to appreciate working in the
garden around our house as I never had before. This used to be a "marital
chore" for me, but something "clicked" in me this Spring, and I've begun to
relish the time I spend working with the plants and soil. One sign of this
is that I've begun to learn plant names, something that I never could manage
to do before. Making myself a part of the life cycle of the plants in our
garden has taught me to appreciate a time scale I never really FELT before:
I've come to accept that some things can't be hurried, but by slowing the
tempo of my perceptions and expectations and carefully paying attention to
the small signs of slow change in the developing plants I husband, I've been
able to tap into a reservoir of insight and calm I never knew before.
You can see some of the fruits of my efforts this Spring at:
http://users.aol.com/gburch5/gard200s.html
I've just begun to explore how potent this new tempo is. Learning to SLOW
DOWN and PAY ATTENTION to phenomena that happen over long time periods has
been like discovering a whole new country for me. I can see the positive
effects in many areas of my life, coming to sense in a much more vivid way
how various different elements of social systems develop at different paces,
for instance.
All from just taking time to smell (and grow) the roses . . .
Greg Burch <GBurch1@aol.com>----<gburch@lockeliddell.com>
Attorney ::: Vice President, Extropy Institute ::: Wilderness Guide
http://users.aol.com/gburch1 -or- http://members.aol.com/gburch1
ICQ # 61112550
"We never stop investigating. We are never satisfied that we know
enough to get by. Every question we answer leads on to another
question. This has become the greatest survival trick of our species."
-- Desmond Morris
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