Fast is Not Always Best

Just recently I was driving to a meetup group on social media in Milpitas trying to shorten my journey by 10 minutes despite the fact that it was rush hour traffic. My aim was to get there as fast as I could without getting a speeding ticket. At the same time, I kept taking some deep breaths to stay calm and relaxed. I’d never been to the group before, but had the address and directions from mapquest. Then I noticed that I needed gas. I’d forgotten about that. “Oh well, I’ll just take it all in my stride.” I stopped for gas en route. I was doing pretty well surrendering to the flow as I mixed in with the traffic on the freeway.

The closer I got to the restaurant where we were to meet, the more jammed up the traffic became. Finally I spotted the restaurant, Marie Callenders, on the other side of the intersection of two freeways. I exited the freeway and tried to judge what road I would take to enter the restaurant, which was coming right up. I glimpsed a road on the right and I turned quickly into it only to land up on the freeway heading off in the opposite direction! Now I was getting tense. I got off at the next exit, crossed the freeway and drove back towards the exit where the restaurant was. This time I carefully drove past the entrance onto the freeway and looked out for the next street to the right. I passed the restaurant, with no turning to the right to be seen. The next building was Denny’s. Ah, they’re probably all in the same lot, I thought. I drove into the Denny’s parking lot. There was a wall between Denny’s and the Marie Callenders parking lot.

I turned around, drove out, waiting about 4 minutes to merge with the traffic, and finally I come to the next intersection which I recognized as the street name I had scrawled on a scrap of paper. I followed the road to the right going all the way down its winding route to arrive at the back of Marie Callenders. I sat still for a while in my car gathering my center from the frenzied whirlwind of activity. I marveled at how easy it is to act faster than is truly needed. In my haste, I had forgotten that I had the street address for the restaurant and yet I had tried to seemingly drive through walls and decide for myself what street the restaurant should be on.

If there had been a tortoise in this story, it would have been sitting at the table in Marie Callenders waiting to greet me. In our action-crammed lives, it’s easy to forget just how much we have to slow down for our inner wisdom to catch up with us. Often a simple event like this is a reflection of what happens in other areas of life. I remember how, when I take a journey step by step instead of trying to leap ahead of myself, that I am buoyantly supported by the flow, the current of wisdom that is ever present to us all, that leads me just where I need to be—in perfect timing.