Recent travels have led to more ideas for stories. This spring I spent a month on the Island of Grenada enjoying the pleasant weather, culture, and sea. It was a relaxing time that allowed me to observe many new things and to consider how different the lives of some of the islanders were compared to my own.
Perhaps the most obvious difference was the sense of time. The island runs at its own speed, not too fast and not too slow. There is a sense that a person can go along with time—let things happen as they will—instead of fighting time—forcing things to happen as you would like. The difference is that in the first case, you lose some minutes but things get done. In the second case things happened faster but you get worked up and tired from the extra effort. The end result is the same. You are just more frustrated and overheated from the effort achieving the goal.
This is exemplified in the traffic jam scenario here in the States assuming there is normal highway congestion. When you are driving in traffic you are often tempted to jump from the sluggish lane in which you are trapped into the neighboring lane that seems to be moving at a faster clip. In my experience, by the time you decide to make the jump several cars have moved past you so you get in line there after the gap in traffic first occurred. Then, inevitably, that lane comes to a grinding halt. At that point you are forced to watch the lane from which you jumped suddenly begin to move and you will see the car you had been staring at for the longest time pass you. You are then tempted to jump back into your original lane but by that time you would be several cars behind where you had been in the first place. The neighboring lane then shuffles along at a snail’s pace but incrementally faster than you.
Avoid the temptation to jump back into that lane at all costs! It is a trap and you will rue your impulse. If you move into the original lane, the lane you leave will assuredly speed up. There is some uncanny law of traffic flow at work here. We mortals do not have the capacity to unravel its nature and complexity.
Sometimes it is better to accept your fate and blithely inch along with the music turned up and an unhurried mind than to play roulette against the traffic gods.
