Hurry

by Katharine Hillard

I have heard of a man who was born in a hurry, who lived in a hurry, who married in a hurry, who repented in a hurry — instead of at leisure, as so many do — who died in a hurry, and who went in a hurry — to another state of consciousness. His was undoubtedly an extreme case, and yet is not this element of hurry the curse of our Western civilization? What is it that reduces us to clamor for “rapid transit” as the crowning grace of life, and prevents our recognizing any element in a journey as superior to that speed? As the now-famous old Indian said: “We have all the time there is”: what, then, are we trying to secure? Nevertheless, how many people we all know, who enter a room as if borne on the wings of the whirlwind, who keep every particle of the atmosphere in a state of restlessness while they remain, whose brows are wrinkled with anxiety, whose voices are sharpened with care, and who, having fidgeted through a brief call, are borne away again in a tempest of haste!

Another class of people are always in a hurry because they are always behindhand. At some time or other they have lost a golden half-hour, and the rest of their life seems to be spent in its fruitless pursuit. I have a friend of this class who is always unpunctual, and who scatters the time of other people with most reckless prodigality. She explains her dilatoriness by saying that she is always so much interested in what she is doing now, that she forgets all about what she has to do next; an excuse more satisfactory to herself than to those who are waiting for her. And another disappoints people because she always tries to do the work of two hours in fifty-nine minutes, and never gets over the fond delusion that she will yet accomplish it. This is the vain hope that betrays most of us, I think, and is the cause of much of that nervous restlessness so generally charged to the much-abused American climate. 

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The Path, June 1893, Vol. 8, pp.68-73; Report of Proceedings, April 23, Second Session, p.19

Read before the Seventh Annual Convention American Section, Aryan T.S. Hall, HQ, New York, April 23-24, 1893.