No Rush

“All the leaves are brown, and the sky is gray.” - California Dreaming

Au contraire! Not this season, not in Michigan (at least today).

The days have been glorious. Low, brilliant sunlight, sparkling leaves in golds, reds, yellows and orange. Mild, sweatshirt weather. Perfect afternoons for soccer and football. Blue skies, wispy, cotton white clouds. Just awesome.

Any yet, Christmas ads started Oct. 1. Fall has been swept off the shelves for winter, people are already planning for December-January breaks. Just 50 days until…

Halt.

Breathe. Look up, look around. See what we have in our hands and our sights today, this moment.

How could we wish this all away?

We even have an extra hour to enjoy it all, along with the added darkness in our days.

Slow down, in life, in traffic, in speech, in thought, in action.

Life is so fleeting. I love that word - fleeting. It means something “doesn’t last as long as you’d like,” like vacations, birthdays, intimacy, fireworks, babies, kittens. You get it.

Now do it. Be intentional. The act of focus is giving way to multi-tasking, mindlessness, scrolling, speeding, disengagement. That is not what this oh-so-short life is all about.

Study after study shows humans need community, not isolation, conversation, not headphones.

In a Google search about the importance of human engagement, I ran into page after page of advice on employee engagement. I had to dig deep for the numbers I wanted – the benefits for personal health and well-being.

Why? Because business gets it – health and mental wellness equal more profits. Imagine, measuring our health and wellbeing in dollars? Sure, it happens. Instead, let’s measure it in longer, more meaningful moment.

I want to focus on contentment, satisfaction and joy in our being and then for the being of those we love, be they next to us in bed or the neighbors across the street.

We have a big planet, but we do not have an endless amount of time nor resources to learn that the solution to many challenges is a simple as sitting around a warm fire and taking, It was good enough for our ancestors. It was good enough to bring us all here, at this time and this place. Let’s follow the fine example.

Joanne Williams is Associate Professor of Media Production and Communication at The University of Olivet.