Slowing Down

I always feel like I'm falling. Like I've been falling for years, and the farther I fall the more speed I pick up.I don't really remember who pushed me, maybe I just walked off on my own, maybe I never really had a choice. But I want my choice now! I want to slow down, to stop. Some days I don't feel like I can stop until I hit the bottom, like I'll be in this perpetual free fall through the darkness for my entire life. Like I'm getting pushed farther and farther, falling faster and faster with no hope of ever slowing down.

I can hear them hit the bottom. I can feel it. It's gut wrenching, miserable, and I know it's coming for me too. Where's the rope? The person who holds out their hands and tells me that I can slow down. Who gets us back to the edge of that cliff and talks us down from it? Who helps us realize that we never should have jumped.

Slow down, it's time to slow down. Breathe. Feel yourself shift to a stop. Reverse. Breathe again. Find that safety line and hold tight. Now next time I decide to jump I know what I'm getting into. I can take it this time. I found my life line. It penetrates the darkness, it brings me back when I'm ready. It's a part of me now, even if I can't always see, it I'll never lose it again. 

Our society has placed these unrealistic expectations on itself that everything we need to do needs to happen faster and faster and absolutely unequivocally efficiently as possible. But when you decide that you want something to become efficient as possible then everything else that goes into it has to do the same, and who are you to make that choice for everyone else in your life? You see, in our digital age of easy convenience it can be difficult to realize that speed affects everything else around us. We no longer take the time to slow down and breathe, to enjoy our lives or families or even the fact that we exist! That we're here!  We made it to this moment. This time, it's amazing. We need to learn what it is to be slow, but that's easier said than done. If every part of our society is based on speed, then saying we need to lose speed isn't an idea that people are going to be very receptive to, but it's a necessary one, and I want people to realize that by giving them the means to do so.

I've recently realized that we can't just run ourselves till we burn out. Not only is it physically and mentally unhealthy, it's also life ending. We run ourselves into the ground and we destroy everything else around us in the process. We've been asking everyone and everything around us to keep up, but not asking if they ever wanted to run this fast in the first place. I'm not sure if we can ever recover, but if we even want to give ourselves a chance we need to start now. We need to slow down.

Take your foot off the gas pedal; there's not much left anyway. Just like our environment we need renewal. Maybe it's time to change to a healthier way of getting energy for ourselves and stop running on the fumes of what's left.