It is human nature to rush. We live in a fast-paced world. Oftentimes, it’s a case of blink and you miss a moment. I’m well aware that ‘life is short’ but there are moments, I believe, that can span eternity only if we close our eyes and absorb the feeling before acting. I can be quite emotional sometimes, which means during these times, I’m acting based on emotion. I’m texting a certain someone out of emotion, eating based on emotion, working based on emotion. I’m not saying that acting out of emotions is a bad thing, I just think there should be a balance. There should be a reasonable amount of emotion against a backdrop of logic.
I recently spoke with a counsellor about my anxiety. I told her about how I felt like my anxiety has impacted most of the decisions I’ve made in my life. She gave me a tip which I found really helpful. It was just one powerful, profound word — wait. She told me whenever it felt like I was about to make a hasty decision, based on my feeling, I should wait, breathe and assess the situation.
As a result of this, I’ve been ruminating over the mercies of waiting. The small mercies of truly savouring life as opposed to biting down on it and chewing it really fast. If you bite into a grape slowly enough, it gives you enough time to experience the taste. I suppose savouring is entirely different from eating. I tend to do more of the latter. It occurred to me that I never really taste my food (and I mean this metaphorically and literally).
We tend to underestimate the importance of waiting before making certain decisions. You don’t have to rush through life. Whenever you feel like your anxiety or the situation around you is maybe forcing a response out of you before you are ready, wait. Waiting manifests in different ways to me. I’ve been waiting a lot these days. Sometimes when I get texts (which is more often than not a constant source of my anxiety), my reflexive action is to reply based on the current anxiety I feel. I now make it a conscious effort to wait. I tell myself, there has to be a better response than what you’re thinking, so wait, breathe, count backwards from 20 if you must.
I’m not saying that there aren’t moments in life where you need to make spontaneous decisions. There are plenty of those moments. There are days that remind you that you need more excitement in your life, days that call out to your inner child like a moth to the flame. There are also days that remind you that life is a menagerie of different flavours waiting to burst on your tongue of consciousness, so bite slowly, savour it, get a taste of it. You don’t need to rush your way through life. There are beautiful moments waiting for you.
Ask yourself, what am I doing? Should I take it slow or pick up the pace? Will this be beneficial to me in the long run? Wait and savour. Close your eyes, imagine the wind in your hair, the flowery feeling of all your dreams rushing out to meet you, the sun on your skin, the air in your lungs. Can you taste it? The magnitude of life, the unending joy, the unflinching miracles waiting to happen. No one is rushing you, so take it slowly. Inhale. Exhale.