As I enter Liverpool Lime Street I realise it's rush hour and I'm on the underground, I love the hustle and bustle, to me it's one of the only times Liverpool truly feels like a city, often sat idly in Manchester's shadows. I'm in my element, letting the atmosphere soak into every pore of my skin, I close my eyes, really feeling the tension of the day ahead for the businessmen and professionals alike, the demands they must have placed upon them when I realise that the tension isn't giving me that warm fuzzy feeling it usually does, there's something wrong; people are moaning, they are tutting and I snap out of it! It is then that I see what has caused this: a woman struggling to contain her small child to the right of the escalator, and God forbid that a person has to wait those two extra minutes for the machinery to fulfil it's purpose! An incredibly rude gentleman (although a gentleman is definitely NOT what he was) rather bluntly asked/demanded that she ensure her child is on the right so that he may get by. Too which the red-faced woman meekly apologised and reprimanded her child.
This got me thinking, are we losing the ability to enjoy life, to see the wider picture simply because we are in too much of a rush?
In today's world we feel stressed, anxious and constantly on edge. Why is this? What has happened to make so many of us frantic and in a hurry to do everything all at once? Surely with more time-saving technologies around than ever before, why is it that many of us still complain we don’t have time to relax and enjoy life?
We all need to slow down - to seriously slow down.
This is hard for many of us. Even when we have a quiet moment, we are busy planning what to do the next hour, the next day, often the next year - I'm hugely guilty of this myself. But in doing this we are not living in the present moment, and because of this, we are not able to enjoy our lives as fully as we are capable of.
Our moments of joy are often few and far between. We don’t laugh as often as we should and if the commuters are anything to go by some of us have even forgotten how to smile! We’re simply too busy to do these things. Too busy, really?! Perhaps we had better acknowledge some harsh truths: we will never be able to finish everything, those plans can never all be done. Even if they were, there is always something new which will demand our attention.
Perhaps we keep ourselves busy to avoid confronting this fact. Maybe we don’t want to think about what really matters in life. Because life is so short, we make ourselves too busy to even sit back and enjoy it. I believe it takes time to learn how to live now, to be fully aware and present in each moment. Put in the effort and make the time now, because it will benefit you greatly throughout your entire life.
If I can try, the ultimate planner, then so can you.
Spread your wings and fly.
Go on, live a little, I dare you!
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