Take time!

Take Time

I once visited a friend of mine who was a senior executive of a multinational company. He had a very elegant and well-appointed office. It was not one of those lavishly furnished eyesores but a simple and very aesthetically designed office. Of course there was this exceedingly glamorous secretary, an area where these multinationals always scored over their Indian counterparts. She distracted me so much that when she asked me who was the person that I was looking for, I was about to say, “You!”

But the steely-willed person that I was, I quickly gathered myself and, with as much dignity I could muster as a renowned batsman walking back to the pavilion felled by the very first delivery, I mentioned my friend’s name. Her face brightened considerably when she heard his name thus giving me an uneasy feeling that there could be something there. Suppressing the stabbing pain of jealousy, I meekly followed her as she ushered me into my friend’s cabin.


It was an astonishingly simple room but the kind that really took your breath away. As this is not some article on Interior Decoration, I refrain from describing it in detail. I must, however, tell you about one item that was a piece-de- resistance. It was the picture of a man walking through a deep forest with his tiny kid perched on his hip and a Pomeranian trailing him. The caption underneath just read “ Take time”. This is an incident that took place nearly a decade and half back but I still ponder over that picture from time to time.

Most of us have lost the art of taking time. We seem to be in some endless hurry in everything we do. We rush through our shower. We rush through our food and drinks. We rush through our reading. We jump through channels on our TV. We skip numbers on our musical albums. We don’t listen to any song in full and of course the disk jockeys don’t play them in full either. We rush through the posts in magazines without imbibing the spirit thereof! We drive at breakneck speed even when our destination is a quiet evening in the beach! We have no time for work and we have no time for our family either. We get irritated when the Prime Minister takes a lot more time to utter the next sentence than his customary ten minutes. We rush and rush and rush.
We just don’t seem to realise that the key to our happiness is taking time and enjoying what we do. It is because we have this tendency to rush through everything that we don’t enjoy anything we do. Such mindless rushing also obliterates our goals. We drive six hours to participate in a function and when it extends 5 minutes beyond the listed 20 minutes, we become impatient! Let us stop acting as though we are racing against time. Only when you are on moderate speed that you are able to enjoy the beauty of the scenery around but not when you are racing your car. Take time. In pursuing anything, the goal is more important than the pursuit.

In our relentless pursuit of illusive happiness, let us pause for a while and just be happy.

 

Dear Gayathri
Once the renownrd Tamil speaker and writer Lena Tamizhvanan said, "If any one tells you he has no time, give him a free ticket to Singapore, all expenses paid and you will see him leaving by the next flight!"
"No time" is a lame excuse. Time management is as essential to good living as financial manegement.
Time management essentially means finding time for what we really WANT to do and not need to do!
The irony is that when we are really able to find time for what we want to do, it may be too late.
Take time!
Sri

 

Dear Sunkan
When we lose money, we can always earn it again but not time! We spend so much time on fruitless pursuits that when we realise it and want to make amends, we find that our realisation has come a trifle too late and again it's rushing!
Like we earmark a percentage of our earnings for charity or religious pursuits or any other objecive close to our heart, we must set apart a percentage of out time for our pursuit of happiness. Whatever it may be! There is no point regretting much later!
sri

 

Dear Cheer
If you will closely observe , no other creation of God rushes through like a human being! It's man's constant fear that he is running out of time that makes him rush perhaps! In the bargain, we forget the purpose of our existence! What's the point in speeding at 100 miles an hour if we forget our destination?
Its a pity that the homing birds in their majestic flight against the backdrop of a brilliant rainbow go unnoticed in our mindless rushing.
It's time to take time!
Sri

 

Dear Kamla
India or US , the mindset is the same! Rushing has become the order of the day. If I pause for a while to admire the Nature's bounty, I am accused of a laid-back approach! I have seen men driving their wives nuts in the mornings to reach the office on time and make her believe that if they dont, the whole organisation will crumble on its foundation! If only the wives could see that their rushing husbands spend the best part of the day in the office in mindless yapping, imagine how let down the wives will feel!
But Kamla, read what I have written about what Lena Tamizhvanan once said. No man can ever be found wanting time if a pretty woman invites him for dinner!
Sri