Hitting the brakes...

Why is it we seem so destined to rush our lives into an oblivious time crunch? Too many memories wasted on looking to the future while the greatness in our lives is left standing in the doorway, staring us straight in the eye as it awaits us. Its ever-present stare looking past all the worries of today and, instead, at the impact crater we've managed to leave in this place. If we spend too much time looking at the past, we're inevitably going to stumble over the future.

Literally shocked at this revelation, our minds tend to reach towards the safe, towards the most reasonably acceptable cliché of reason: it's the only way to survive in this day and age. We must rush, we tell ourselves, because we have to plan for the future, for when we grow old, but in doing so we slide ourselves into the same old cycle of things — a cycle causing us to forget who we are and where we came from while simultaneously causing us to look blindly towards where we're headed.

Wandering, oblivious to the world's plan, God's plan, if you will.

We rush ourselves out of youth because that's what we've been conditioned to believe is the norm, not what our instincts constantly tell us. Grow up now and be responsible because retirement is just around the corner. And now, decades after we've inadvertently lost our innocence in the unnecessary and socially conditioned blind push, we look back on our lives as being one giant bull-run, too frantic, too quick to really appreciate where we've been, what we've done and where we've come from.

We blink, and life has literally passed us by.

But time heals all wounds. It gives us ample opportunity to right our wrongs and to build something worth being proud of, worth leaving behind in this world once we're dead and gone. A thoughtful gift while our bones return to dust and our essence blows off into the wind. All this may come freely but it can never, ever, come at the risk of enjoying the now, enjoying the present.

We have to fight for what we believe in, teach what we feel is imperative and live as if there is no tomorrow because one day, our lungs will breathe their last and we will face true judgement and the test of our existence: did we leave an indelible mark on this place or did we waste our one gift of a life rushing towards the grave? The time has come to hit the brakes and pull tightly on the reigns because the globe does not, nor will it ever, stop spinning for the sake of one man...