Life Can Move at a Snail’s Pace

No matter how much we want something to happen, it can feel like it takes forever for things to move. We dream about the end result or we work diligently to get the project done only to have to wait for all the pieces to fall into place. Then bad news hits. Like a friend of mine who is a couple years younger than me and just suffered a stroke. They did surgery and found a brain tumor. She has not woken our of her coma, so no one is really sure what life will be like for her once she wakes up. And now time seems to stand still.

Life happens. Bad things happen. People we know and love experience the unexpected. Tragedy steps in and disrupts all our well laid plans. Reality is what sets in when we hang up the phone and have to live in what seems like a slow motion world. Everything seems to be moving at a snail’s pace and uncertainty is the only certainty we know. Now the days really drag and not knowing makes everything else seem unimportant. One phone call puts everything else into a completely different perspective, even though my world hasn’t changed much; her world will never be the same.

We pass people everyday on our hurried errands and get it done mindset that are experiencing the most awful events of their lives. We have no idea how the person next to us in traffic or the woman on the train is feeling. What is going on in their world? What news did they just receive that has changed everything forever? We may never know. Let kindness and compassion be the rule of your day. Even if you do not know what is really going on, give the other person the benefit of the doubt. They may simply be waiting for the next shoe to drop or the pieces of the jumble in their life to come together. They may be experiencing life at a snail’s pace and could use some patience on their behalf. As we all know, our time will come. We will be the person on the other end of the phone getting the bad news and waiting.