Slow down and enjoy life. It’s not only the scenery you miss by going too fast —

 

Above Video-courtesy of Ken Chee of Penang, Malaysia

Points to Ponder: “Charles Darwin described himself as a slow thinker. Einstein famously sat in his office … gazing into the middle distance for hours on end … in the intellectual world and the arts, people have always understood the power of looking slowly at the big picture.” — Carl Honoré

Story Line: Learning to see slow, gradual processes requires slowing down our frenetic pace and paying attention to the subtle as well as the dramatic. If you sit and look into a tidepool, initially you won’t see much of anything going on. However, if you watch the long enough, after about ten minutes the tidepool will suddenly come to life. The world of beautiful creatures is always there, but moving slowly to be seen at first. The problem is our minds are so locked in one frequency, it’s as if we can only see at 78 rpm; we can’t see anything at 33 1/3. We will not avoid the fate of the frog until we learn to slow down and see the gradual process that often pose the greatest threats. – Peter Senge in The Fifth Discipline. The Art & Practice of The Learning Organization

Reflection: The readers found Friday Reflections two weeks ago (There has never been, nor there ever be, another like you. Like You) not only entertaining but also thought provoking. Seemingly simple picture of eight dogs with a quiz “Which one is different?”, had a very profound message once the readers exercised their observations and compared the answers.

In many messages received privately and some in the blog, readers came up with the range of answers: some found one dog being different, many found two to four having some difference, a few found five and six, one with seven and four readers found all four dogs having something different. I believe the hint was in the title of the picture “I checked for 15 minutes and can’t figure out which one is different.” 15 minutes was the clue to slow down and observe closely and not to go for race against time.

One reader wrote “Very smart indeed... Our mind is conditioned to act fast based on past experiences. When such a pic is shown and asked to find one that is different, logic escapes the mind. This is a universal phenomenon.”

That is why we need to slow down and observe carefully. By rushing to judgement too fast, we may be missing out on many opportunities to discover new things and solve problems correctly. The deeper we listen and observe, we will find uniqueness that is in every living being. Appreciating differences, in this case both in physical characteristics of dogs and the various answers of readers, and combining them for the optimal solution is a source of strength. This is the reason for the above storyline, as we all need to take a deep breath and pause to observe the world around us. By doing this we will learn to appreciate everything that life offers us.

So however insignificant this fun picture may look, there is a lot to learn for solving significant problems for people in all walks of life: Leaders, Parents, Teachers, Politicians, Scientists and every one of us.

Title is from the quote of Eddie Cantor: “Slow down and enjoy life. It’s not only the scenery you miss by going too fast — you also miss the sense of where you are going and why.”- 

Comments

[Milan]

Yes! We all need to press the pause button and reflect…

[Kalpit]

Very beautiful 👌🏻👌🏻👌🏻👍🏻😃

[TF- Iceland]

Loving the message, also trying to take it slow as much as I can in this mad world 😊

[FE-Japan]

So true. Let’s take time to appreciate the beauty around us! 😊

[Sam]

In today's time, it is very easy to be BUSY and very hard to SLOW down. At work, we have lots of meetings and emails which take our attention. After work, there are a lot of things that clamour for our attention (Netflix, facebook etc). So, we are perennially short of "white spaces" in our life. This triggers something called "psychology of scarcity". Great talk by the authors of this book here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=29yi-5226rs&t=903s

Now, I have more justification of not being busy because the side effects are quite bad.

[HUMBLE WARRIOR]

"THE BEST THINKING IS RETHINKING" -SHANE PARRISH

[Joy-AN]

I’ve had the experience where after thinking more about something my perspective changes

[Daughter]

Stay safe. It’s a crazy world and people are on autopilot. It’s sad but it’s the capitalistic society we’ve built - rush to go make the money to buy things you really don’t need and spend time away from the things that should matter most. Love you. Hope you had a good weekend. ❤️