Number nine.
Time.
Time is - this second.
Time is - tomorrow.
Time is money.
Take time to smell the roses...
Time is - what?
Time is precious, that's what. But it has come to me that rushing through it is not a very good way of making good use of it. Going too fast means missing the good stuff, I think. This, of course, comes from someone who is often accused of moving entirely too damn slowly... But, accordingly, I have noticed that attempting to do things too quickly inadvertently means that mistakes will be made which will have to be corrected later, if not causing a need for everything to be completely redone. So what good does it do to move so quickly? (Aside from, say, the Supreme Court back in 2000 and well, you know how that turned out).
If you walk down the street in New York City and you're not moving fast enough, someone will step on you because everyone else is moving at a quick pace and you really need to keep up unless you want to take the chance of being trampled on. I don't know if everyone is running late and trying to get someplace in time or if they just like to walk fast. When I was there I was usually running late or trying to catch a train or the subway, and other times, well - I just liked to walk fast. Good exercise, walking fast. But now I really wish I'd slowed down. Why? Because I didn't see anything. I was walking so fast that I never really looked at what was passing right in front of me. I looked at people's faces as I raced by them. I looked at the sidewalk as my feet sped across it (not much to see on the sidewalk, though). I rarely looked at the storefronts. I didn't look at the signs. I never really looked at the city - I was moving too quickly to get to wherever it was that I was in such a hurry to get to.
And now I think about the World Trade Center, New York City, Washington D.C., every street and every path in every city in every country of the World - and I wonder how much we don't see. I remember being inside the World Trade Center once and I stopped - and just stood and looked up and around at everything. I remember what it looked like inside because I took the time to stop and look. The outside, well - I raced past that to get inside - and now it's gone. In a second - the whole world can change.
I could take this further. I could take this so many places. The world. The environment. The wars. The-end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it. The effects of our actions - and inaction - for and against the preservation of life on this earth. How we treat our land - how we treat each other. Are we moving so fast that we don't see what is happening? Are we in too much of a hurry to get to wherever we're going in our daily lives that we don't see what is going on around us? Is it O.K. to turn on the National News each night to get twenty minutes of what has inevitably become sound bites on what's going on in the world? Are we missing something?
It's no secret how I feel about the administration in the Oval Office at the moment. It's no secret that I do not trust this administration to tell the truth, to administer fair and just policies - to govern with the well-being of the world in mind and not the continued dominance of corporate America and the depths of their pockets. It's no secret that I question the integrity of this administration and the direction of what is, in this one humble earthling's opinion - a clear agenda in favor of super-power bullying tactics and corporate rule, and against both the environmental and harmonious well-being of planet Earth. I really don't think our planet can absorb another four years of this without extreme and formidable consequences.
The environmental laws have been so relaxed by this administration that toxic levels of chemicals can be released into our rivers, streams, lakes, oceans and air - giving the Earth so much respect as to treat it as a dump and turn it into a corporate wastebasket - because the current government has made it legal and easy to do - at the expense of our health and Earth.
A recent government-ordered scientific report on Global Warming was so mutilated by the Bush administration that the truth about the problem was eliminated - changing words stating conclusively that this is a serious problem to those saying it required further study to reach a conclusion. The document was so butchered by the Bush administration that the words initially used no longer exist in the document and it has been deemed "unprintable." All because the government doesn't want anyone to know the truth about the dangerous track we are on in destroying our most precious environmental resources - and so it can continue to govern in favor of big-money-corporate-polluters-with-deep-political- pockets and thus contribute to environmental destruction - which in effect works against our own self-preservation.
And what about our global position? In an instant we have gone from having the sympathies of Nations in the wake of 9/11 - to mistrust and contempt. Weapons-of-mass-destruction? Hundreds of tons of weaponsofmassdestruction??? Well, this one humble earthling would like to know where the hell they are.
Finally, the media is beginning to ask some much needed questions. Were we lied to in pursuit of some perhaps not-so-well-hidden agenda?
Time will tell. The truth has a way of coming out.
As for our position in the world at the moment - well, that's a scary place, I think.
How did this happen so quickly? Were we moving too fast? Did we miss something??? Were we not looking?
It's true, as Don Henley once wrote, "In a New York minute everything can change."
Take a good look around. Time is passing.
Time is - happening.
Time is - everything.
And that's all I have to say about this. For now, anyway.
Peace 2 u.
Last Update 2003
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