Speed - Is It Good?

Okay, first of all this is not about the strengths of "uppers" or their abuse. Instead, this is a open-ended ponder on whether having something faster equals better. As I write, my intrepid class of college students are playing Photoshop Tennis (or at least my version of it), a non-stop game of trading images where they only have ten minutes to modify a given visual composition. Five turns at ten minutes each, that's all they have to make their case as digital artist supreme. Cruel, no?

But it does get to the heart of our faster-is-better culture. I mean, fast food, movies on demand, information via Google, it seems that there is little we still have to wait for. Off the top of my head, all I can think of is traffic to move and children to be born (okay, that was a little flippant). But seriously, in a world where Fed Ex becomes an industry bellweather and email is the communications norm, when is it advisable or desirable to slow down?

Or even more importantly, do our lives have room to be slowed down? Every day at work I have a pile of things to do, plus everything left from the days before. Every weekend I have a honey-do-list that grows exponentially. And my newborn son ensures that I get less sleep each day, so that I have more minutes to do more stuff. I'd take a vacation, only I'm that much behind because of it...

So I urge you to slow down every once and a while - be a rebel. Smell a flower, go for a walk, play a round a golf, watch clouds float by. Anything to break the cycle and catch up with yourself. And pity my poor students - they're racing around like manics right now!