Be Calm + New Picture Added (Scrapbook, Page 3)
I like to observe people I encounter in the streets, at restaurants, at stores, at the various workplaces I visit. Lately, I've noticed an increasing level of distress among many of these people. They seem always to be "on edge", nervous, excitable, impatient. When I talked to an old friend recently, she posited that the current level of joblessness in the United States might be the cause. The thought of being jobless excites jobholders and jobless alike- the jobless for the obvious reasons and the jobholders because they fear becoming jobless. This is a possible reason but I think there's something more. Once again, I blame the pace of life. Modern times, modern tools, including the speed of the internet, cause people to rush through life and believe that speed is always more important than substance. They believe that they must rush to match the speed of their tools, they must rush because everyone else is rushing.
I've written about stress before and offered a few suggestions. I believe the pace of our current lifestyles produces a great deal of the stress we all feel. But it occurs to me that we can continue our pace, while reducing the stress, if we can bring calm to our lives. There is nothing inconsistent with speed in remaining composed, collected, cool in confronting whatever we need to accomplish. If we feel the need, we can move quickly but calmly. In fact, if we collect ourselves and proceed deliberately and calmly, we can not only achieve speed we are less likely to be inefficient in our tasks, less likely to move down the wrong path, more likely to reach our targets.
Let's strive to remain calm and encourage others to remain calm in the face of life's problems and tasks. If we can all remain calm, we will reduce stress, do a better job and, perhaps, get things done faster. Speed can be achieved without so much stress.
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