It doesn't matter how slow you go

All these thousands of years of human evolution has led us to a point where what seems important is how fast we can all get to somewhere and how fast we can get the job done once we get there. Fast cars, fast trains, crash courses, fast food, instant noodles, one-click friendship requests & confirmations, etc etc. A friends of mine shared an age-old adage from Confucius (not sure, and I refuse to google to confirm, leave me alone) which I have encountered some time back. "It doesn't matter how slow you go, as long as you don't stop." Incidentally, I have had a conversation with this same friend regarding time and relativity weeks ago.

This weekend is one of those rare slow ones. It's not that there is nothing for me to do; in fact my "to do" list is a mile long as usual (and I suspect it will be like that for all time unless I will myself to stop). I found that if I don't step out of the house, time slows down more. The minute I go out to do some errand, especially if I go to a mall, the minutes and the hours zoom past as fast as a jeepney driver with diarrhea. Anyway, the point tonight in resurrecting this Confucian quote, out from under all the subsequent data it has been buried under, is that I think, sometimes, people should do more than just slow down. I think there are times when we need the absolute silence and resolution in stopping. Once in a while. Just stopping and dropping everything.

And DO NOTHING--without falling asleep of course. I used to be good at this...when I tried it earlier, it felt... ridiculous.

I miss my tai-chi and eskrima arnis classes. And no I did not wear costumes like that, I don't think I ever left the beginner's level; it's just really the exercise and the calming effect on the mind these martial arts offer that I were after--something I realized much later on in life. There had been a few things in life that I got into that taught me the value of stopping, these sports were some of them. And then there is photography. You can't always shoot moving and relying on fast lens. I have always imagined photography as something akin to whatever it is that snipers do (snipering, teehee). You have to just stop and disappear so you can compose through the viewfinder and shoot what you want how you want when you need to.

Right, am I still making sense?

With that I share some photos I uploaded at AUDRNing (but which I set to public anyway). The first is some activities during the second day of the workshops and the other one is photos on the way to Intramuros, Manila coming from Miriam College in QC. Check out the cute kiddie laptops, XO. I had so much fun playing with these, and I don't think I'm the only one who did. :)

*Sigh* Here comes Monday. A toute a l'heure!