Running to stand still

I try too hard, sometimes. I try too hard at the wrong things and when it all goes wrong- or not even wrong, just not as I envisaged it- I turn inwards and brood, or outwards to slash and attack. You can call it Quixotic if you want to be Romantic, but really it's just plain misguided. Don't get me wrong, it isn't in trying to compete or being influenced by someone else: I do it to myself, no-one else, nothing else but my own unrealistic expectations and a sense that I should do or be something that I'm not.

Oddly enough, I want to have an slow-paced life, to be able to observe the simple things: to climb a mountain at my own pace, to watch things grow, to grow myself and to watch others grow. I like the idea of allotments, novels, the Slow Food movement, watching children grow up, oil paintings, stalagtites and stalagmites, the lighting of an open fire then watching the coals slowly glow and burn, sitting on a beach and watching the tides, seeing dawn creep over the horizon. How often do I really take time out to look and do and be?

Sometimes I rush at life like it was something you could actually catch: I feel myself becoming a volatile mass of volition, kinetic energy rushing, crashing and breaking like a wave and taking all with me in a mass of destruction. (Remorse comes later, of course... always remorse) I don't see the end result, I don't even take notice of the moments I am living in, I just rush and push.

Other times, I feel the world rush by as I become impassive and rocklike, being ground down by every gentle lapping movement. Again, I do not see outside myself. I don't think about the effect on others I just remain stubbornly rigid, getting worn away bit by bit.

I won't get worn away, of course, I won't let myself. In my moments of clarity-increasingly longer moments, bit by bit- I see the effect it has on me and those I love. But I can feel that unless I either stop running and rushing or stop standing stonily still the gradual grinding will wear me thinner and smaller, or the crashing and wracking will break me apart - if I let it.

And I won't let it. I have too much to lose. I want to see the slow things grow. I want to grow slowly now.