Some of us spend quite a lot of our most valuable time running around in an unreasonable rush. Always searching for new ways to be more efficient, more effective and smarter. A few of us even seems to be afraid that if we are not constantly moving fast forward we must automatically be moving backwards.
What happened to the temporarily stop, the pause, the small break or maybe just the momentarily slowdown. Why can’t we give ourselves the time to take a look at our surroundings anymore? Take the time to discover who and what is around us. Time for perception. What are we doing here and where we are heading?
Have a break- have a KitKat! I love KitKat – actually I love most chocolate. But KitKat have this brilliant slogan. They literally encourage us to take a halt and if a break has that kind of commercial potential I believe there must be something about it.
Instead of listening to the premisses in the KitKat-message – take a break and slow down a little – we just eat the chocolate while we’re racing ahead for our maybe meaningless goals. In a hurry, slightly stressed and probably with chocolate crumbles on the shirt.
Traveling as overlanders in a Land Rover for many years and all over the world has taught us the unnecessariness of speed. Some Toyota Landcruiser owners might claim that this is a case where necessity is the mother of invention, and it’s just because a Land Rover isn’t nearly as efficient as a Toyota, and I guess they are right.
But as overlanders we have the journey as the primarily goal and somehow we always tend to reach our goals – in our own slow pace. I believe that might be a lesson we can adapt to our everyday life.
Therefore I have now officially declared to be (wife suggested to add a “even”) more inefficient!
I guess some might wonder how my surroundings reacted when I first announced this plan for the new myself?
When I introduced the idea for my sarcastic but still lovingly wife she looked surprised and said she thought I already had been living by those rules for several years and that she feared being less effective could be harmful. Though she wasn’t especially precise about who could be harmed or how…
But she did mention some hypotheticals not-finished-home-projects that could have been done a lot faster, and asked me to take out the garbage instead of just standing in her way.
At work my boss said something about a baseline and a paycheck – but he said it while hurrying out the office so fast that the new myself couldn’t keep up with his pace and I kind of missed the – probably very important- point.
So the conclusion is that my plan already works..!
Seriously! I don’t intend not to be worth my paycheck or not to take part in my household, but I do intend prioritizing being both more observant and aware. And I do intend to get the most out of my presence and live out my dreams just like I drive my old Land Rover – as slow as possible and only as fast as necessary. I’m pretty sure that will bring me far.
And while I practice my new skills as inefficient I’ll grab a KitKat and start planning the next slow paced overland journey. Hopefully it’ll bring us to Caucasus.
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