Earlier last week, within the space of twenty minutes, I'd heard two separate versions of Johnny Mercer's Fools Rush In in two different places. Kismet, y'know? Obviously Fate had something dastardly in store for me if I kept up the same breakneck pace I am known for, so I resolved to live life to the SLOWEST. To embrace the relaxing philosophy of Bobby McFerrin, and thus achieve true inner peace. I stopped running for lights, and if I was walking through an intersection and the light changed? So much the worse for the hot-headed taxi driver. I went Christmas shopping and considered every purchase from as many angles as I could. At work, I made sure to double-check and triple-check every thing that left my desk or outbox. In the mornings, I rose like the . No point in rushing.
Once the temperature dropped to -15 (and worse), I became keenly and quickly aware of just how fool-hardy this approach was. There's a reason why the slow and languid pace does not come easy to the lands who experience a season called winter. Frost-bite comes quick and hard. Crops wither and die soon after the first frost falls. If the fable of the ant & the grasshopper were set in more tropical climes, we could see the grasshopper's play-all-day philosophy as sensible - why bother working the fields? Look at all these mango trees! But no, in that fable, there's winter, and when the grasshopper's bohemian scarf is all that stands between him and its cruel, unforgiving grip, he has to begrudgingly admit the ant was right.
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