Making Time to Smell the Flowers!

Most of us live busy lives, in a busy world.

It seems to go without saying, and it seems to be part and parcel of modern life that we're always "on the go." I know that holds true for myself — I'm sure it holds true for many who read this post.

In some way, I expect our eternal busy-ness isn't necessarily a product of where you live, as much as a reflection of the overall "shortening" of time, pretty much everywhere. Even my relatives in Denmark — where the work week is much shorter than here in the USA — are experiencing this.

It feels like we are every moving faster because we are cramming more and more shorter things into the same amount of time.

Just consider (for example) how often we have substituted a quick headline on twitter/X for a full news story on network television. Instead of choosing a lesser number of things that matter to us, we're feeding ourselves this steady diet of "tiny tidbits" that have great numbers but not much depth.

If you are a regular visitor to this blog (thank you!) you have undoubtedly noticed that I illustrate all my posts with my own photographs from nature, rather than something "flashier" from some nameless online image library.

One of the reasons for that is that getting out and truly getting in touch with nature offers me the opportunity to "break state" and slow way down for a while.

In the olden days, people used to say "remember to take time to smell the flowers" as a caution to not get too involved with our ambitions and work lives.

It's good advice, even today! You aren't going to miss out on much as a result of allowing yourself to slow down, every now and then.

It can be a challenge, I grant you.

We live in a world — at least in many parts of the world — where we have been "trained" by societal measures and values that we are "missing out" in some way, if we're not in the thick of things, 24/7/365.

But it's not actually necessary!

In most cases, this fear that we're missing something is artificially manufactured. The cynic in me suggests it's little more than some marketer's ploy to get us to buy more products that won't actually make us any happier.

I was listening to a podcast earlier today, and part of the interview covered the idea of success, and how we define it, and how we strive for it.

The person being interviewed — a former motivational speaker and success coach — pointed out that when we set ourselves goals and then achieve them, we seldom end up content, as a result. As a rule, we don't choose to be happy with our accomplishment... instead we choose to "move the goalposts" so we can strive for an ever larger goal... keeping the proverbial "carrot" of what we allegedly want to accomplish eternally out of reach.

As such, we never actually end up with time to slow down and smell the flowers!

The context of the interview also had to do with retirement, and covered the related idea that many people — when they do finally retire — simply don't know how to relax, slow down and enjoy the fruits of a long life of working hard.

It's not healthy!

Granted, this issue might be greater here in the USA, where many people are "trained" to become workaholics (by ridiculous work schedules and demands) who can never sit down for more than a few seconds without getting up and doing something.

Right now, I'm smiling a bit to myself because one of the reasons I have never quite fit in, in this country is that I am actually very good at taking time to smell the flowers and do very little!

Of course, I have the benefit of being self-employed... and I do have to work very long hours in order to just keep my life afloat, financially.

But even so, I make the time to smell the flowers! Or just take picture of them, and butterflies and beautiful sunsets.

And no, I am not a professional photographer who sells the work... it's purely for my blogs and web sites, and for the love of nature!

Thanks for stopping by, and have a great weekend!

How about you? Do you take time to stop and smell the flowers? Do you tend to become a workaholic? Are you always busy? Or do you appreciate a slower pace of life?" Leave a comment if you feel so inclined — share your experiences — be part of the conversation!

(All text and images by the author, unless otherwise credited. This is ORIGINAL CONTENT, created expressly for this platform — Not posted elsewhere!)

Created at 2024.03.08 23:30 PST
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