Ultimate Connectivity:
disconnect to reconnect
Janet Kuypers
10/14/16 adapted from prose 5/30/09 “Hurry Up and Wait”
People are rushing,
don’t have time for breakfast
after you slammed the alarm snooze button three times,
stumble out of bed, you’re clean enough,
forget the shower, clean up your face,
smooth your hair, put on your work clothes,
grab the briefcase, lock the door,
speed up but avoid the sweat of a near sprint
to make it to the train, or the bus stop.
You can get something to eat on the way,
you think, as your light pant doesn’t change
once you’ve stopped at the stop.
You’ve still got places to be,
check your watch,
look down the street,
where is your carrier,
you need that vehicle
to get you to where you need to be.
Pace a bit.
Adjust your clothes.
Check your watch again.
This is corporate America, you think, hurry up and wait.
The world rotates at a thousand miles an hour.
Everything is spinning.
You see more and more, but feel connected less and less.
So maybe it’s time to make choices
and it’s time to lay claim
to everything we’ve been blindly giving away —
‘cause if I can make choices
to walk flights of stairs
instead of taking smoke breaks at work,
or if I can pick up recyclable garbage
left on the street by piggish people
who can’t even take care of their own trash
(because if I don’t do something after I complain
I’m almost as bad as they),
if I can make choices like that, maybe it’s time
to look for peace, or even meditate, anywhere.
I mean,
if you’re waiting for work
at a bus stop,
then try to relax right there.
Maybe you can reconnect
by disconnecting.
Find some time like this to just stop,
because everything around us moves too fast anyway.
The world orbits it’s axis
at close to one thousand miles an hour,
it speeds around the sun
at sixty-six thousand miles an hour,
and our solar system
is hurtling around the outer edges
of our Milky Way galaxy
at four hundred eighty-three thousand miles an hour.
And news flash —
our entire galaxy
is speeding away
from other galaxies too
at an astounding
one point three million miles an hour,
which, the last time I checked,
we keep getting closer to the seed of light...
So, if the news from the world bombards you
while you’re being hurled through the cosmos,
maybe that is when you need to meditate,
mentally step outside it all. Maybe then
you could then gain a new perspective.
Come to peace with everything.
And maybe that is when,
when you disconnect,
that this hurtling Earth
can come full circle
and everything can connect again.
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