HURRIER

My grandma had a sign in her kitchen - above the stove, I think:

"The hurrier I go,
the behinder I get."

New York seems to be a city full of "hurriers".

We hit snooze so many times on our alarm clocks that we then have to hurry to the subway. And if we hear a train coming - look out! - we'll run in four-inch heals and three-piece suits to catch that sucker - old people and mothers with strollers, get outta the way! But if for some unlucky reason we miss that train, we'll look at our watches too many times, and sigh and pout and peer down the tracks, trying to force the next train to "hurry up" by sheer willpower. And boy do we get angry if that train makes us later than we already are... I've seen perfectly decent looking people curse those subways with words that would make Tony Soprano blush.

Now, I'm sure it's not the case that we just can't wait to get to our jobs. It's just that we can't wait. We must hurry!

Bound up the stairs, out of the subway station, and push past the person asking "Can ya spare one penny?" to get to that Starbucks - so we can wait 20 minutes in line for a $5 coffee that's not even so great.

Rush through projects at work just to get them off our "to do" lists, so we can feel like we've acomplished something - even though we end up having to do it all over again because we were in such a hurry we misspelled "accomplished".

Leave work early to beat everyone else to happy hour, or the restaurant, or the train - even though everyone else has the same idea, so no one's really beating anybody... if we just waited an extra 1/2 hour, that subway car would be a lot less crowded and we might actually find a seat to sit down and enjoy a good book on the 45-minute ride home.

And even if you don't feel any "behinder" at the end of the day, you must admit that we spend a good chunck of our time in the mode of "hurry up and wait". And if waiting is so unappealing to us, then why do we hurry at all?