I know a lady whose husband loves speed. Last month she was traveling with him out of town and, as usual, he was driving very fast. At a certain point she felt they were not going in the right direction, so she checked on the map. She immediately realized that, in fact, they had missed the correct highway exit. When she told her husband, he answered, “It does not matter, darling. We are breaking a record.” The lady felt logically puzzled. Breaking a record by driving fast … to arrive “where”? This the question that the husband didn’t bother wondering about. He just wanted to use his car to move as quickly as possible. Like him, nowadays most people appear to be always in a hurry. Our world seems to have become a Formula 1 circuit, we look around and the cars we see remind us of Ferrari or McLarens. The drivers have the looks of world champions such as Jackie Stewart or Mario Andretti.
Our society seems to be moving on a racetrack upon which human beings are engaged in a racing competition. However, although it seems that they are heading toward a “Finish” line, they end up realizing that such a line does not even exist. The race has a purpose in itself because the possible goals are nothing but illusions. You need a motivation to decide where to go, to actually be aware of where you are going, why you are heading there and clearly see what is needed to reach your goal. Most of all, you must have consciousness of the “worth” of such goal. Worth is not a synonym for wealth, here. A worthy goal is something that can give you the intimate satisfaction of having done your best, that you have contributed to the creation of a better world. If a clear, healthy motivation is there, it is possible to see the road to follow. And you do not need to speed up. A regular pace is enough.
Some people keep on complaining about the course but do nothing to change it. If they keep following it, if they continue going in the same old direction, it can only mean that, after all, they are happy to find themselves in such a situation. They like moping, they prefer to have something to feel sorry about rather than fix the problem. When a dull life style, when indifference and dissatisfaction have become familiar features, many human beings end up believing that no other way to live their lives is available. They accept, once again, to be conditioned by the outside world. They do not believe they can say “No” or “Enough!” because they don’t trust themselves, they don’t think they are able to do it or, possibly and unconsciously, they feel they don’t deserve it. They don’t dare to express their feelings because they are afraid of being abandoned. But what is a relationship, a friendship or any connection when, instead of giving joy and serenity and providing encouragement, it becomes the opposite? Any relation creates experiences that either give health (when they favor spiritual progress) or they are the main cause of disease (when it hypnotizes the other to the point that he or she forgets their potential of human beings).
If you are willing to, and succeed in detaching yourself for a moment from your present situation and attempt to perceive life from a higher perspective, you may realize that all this running about, all this speeding up, all this frenetically searching are, most of the time, useless. You certainly need to be active, to “do” things, not to linger or procrastinate but, at the same time, you should give yourself time to reflect, to plan, to proceed carefully and purposefully. Filling your life with frenetic activity just to “keep busy” may give you the illusory feeling that you are “important”. But it is just an illusion, indeed. The world (your own environment, too) will survive and continue even without you being there running around. What is needed from you, instead, is a tranquil, poised and well pondered contribution to the human progress, starting from your family and your working/social circle.
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