Rapid Transit <-> Slow Living?

To everything there is a season, a time for every purpose under the sun (Ecclesiastes 3:1 — and ‘Turn Turn Turn’ by the Byrds’

One thing about rapid transit — it make you slow down.

Among the things I am learning about living without a car is that it takes a lot more planning and a lot more time to get from place to place. A no car life that uses public transportation to get from place to means that you…

• add time for planning how to get from where you are to where you want to be (“what bus should I take and when should I leave?” or “what’s the best bicycle route”)
• add time in for walking to the closest bus stop and making sure that you get there BEFORE the bus arrives
• be patient! Although it takes 7 or 8 minutes in a car to get across town, on public transportation, it probably will take at least an hour.

So, add all this together and without a car, life slows down!

Unfortunately, in our modern day society, there is this crazy idea that slow is equivalent to qualities like ‘lazy’, or ‘inefficient’ instead of things like ‘less stress’ and ‘more contact with people’. But, slowing down may not be such a bad thing if only because it’s the only alternative we have to the rushing and fast pace life that many of us are living.

Related to this is a basic (very unscientific) principle that I have been reflecting on lately. Things can’t go ‘fast’ forever. It’s not nature’s way. Nature made ‘fast’ to be short spurts for specific purposes. Going fast all the time stresses and shakes the system until it finally comes apart.

Fast money doesn’t work (recession anyone?), fast cooking isn’t healthy (microwave dinners), fast development doesn’t work (urban sprawl).

In the things that I have been reading lately, I am getting more and more convinced that fast is going to go away — not by choice but because the system won’t take it anymore. Things like rising gas prices, environmental issues and economic issues are going to force us to change our speed from fast to slow. Some of us will embrace and enjoy this change and others will fight it all the way.

I hate to be a dismal prophet here but I am convinced in the near future our social assumption about getting from here to there are going to change radically.

So, instead of complaining about the hour that it takes me to get across town, I’m going to enjoy it and use the time I have wisely.

I’ll just consider myself on the leading edge of the “slow curve”.

Happy commuting!

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