The Life You’ve Always Wanted
The most serious sign of hurry sickness is a diminished capacity to love. Love and hurry are fundamentally incompatible. Love always takes time, and time is one thing hurried people don’t have.
A pilot once told me his favorite airline story. An elderly couple were flying first class, sitting behind a businessman who was enormously frustrated with them. They had been just ahead of him in line at the gate, and again boarding the plane, and they moved slowly, but he was in a hurry. When the meal was served, they delayed the businessman again by having to get some pills from the overhead storage, inadvertently dropping a battered duffel bag. “What’s the matter with you people?” he exploded, loudly enough for the whole cabin to hear. “I’m amazed you ever get anywhere. Why can’t you just stay home?”
To register his anger, the man sat down and reclined his seat back as hard as he could—so hard that the elderly husband’s tray of food spilled all over him and his wife. The flight attendant apologized to the couple profusely: “Is there anything we can do?” she asked. The husband explained it was their fiftieth wedding anniversary and they were flying for the first time. “Let me at least bring you a bottle of wine,” the flight attendant offered.
She did so. When it was uncorked, the old husband stood up, proposed a toast—and poured the bottle over the head of the impatient businessman sitting in front of them. And, the pilot told me, everybody in the cabin cheered.
Ortberg, John (2008). The Life You’ve Always Wanted: Spiritual Disciplines for Ordinary People (pp. 81-82). Zondervan. Kindle Edition.
