A lazy sailor at heart

I once met a man who said he had visited every exotic place from the Grand Canyon to the Great Wall, but when I questioned him closely I discovered he hadn’t seen the songbirds in his own backyard. What I would like to suggest to such people is that they sit perfectly still and stare intently into a lily pond. But that’s difficult advice to give and even more difficult to accept in a society that holds contemplation in such low esteem. We believe in locomotion for its own sake; we think as long as we’re flitting from one place to place we’re getting somewhere. We’re sprinters running mindlessly against the clock, against ourselves, against the angel of death, and missing the essence of our existence as we go. What matters at this precious moment is what has always mattered: the dailiness of life. Everything significant is small and slow.