Make Time to Smell the Flowers and Feel the Wind
I remember this song as a child, where have all the flowers gone, shouting at the top of my lungs without actually realizing the sad intonation it has. Today I truly wonder where the flowers have gone. The flowers of our times, the children, the youth the mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, uncles, aunts, grandparents and friends, all who were there for each other, where have they gone?
Times have changed and there is less and less interaction among the families. Everyone is busy and stressed out. This stress thing seems to have taken over all our lives in such a way that we just do not seem to have any life at all except work, complain and pay bills, complaining all over again. We go to bed tired and wake up tired. Everyone is irritated and psychologists, psychiatrists and guidance counselors are making money off us and they themselves have to see a shrink every so often!!
We did not have guidance counselors and therapists as kids. The teachers sat us down and talked to us. Our parents, grandparents, neighbors, brothers, sisters, friends, servants and others lent us an ear and listened most of the time. Occasionally they would say something. Just talking about the problem seemed to take care of it.
The doctor spent at least thirty minutes or more examining us and talking to us, to find the root cause of our illness. The doctor was patient and kind, never in a rush. Today doctors have fancy offices and receptionists and one spends more time waiting than seeing a doctor. Once with the doctors, they have a writing pad on which they write as we speak the few sentences we are allowed, all the tests that have to be done and all the specialists we have to see. Again, what happened to the good old family doctor? There are specialists and more narrowed down specialists who inspect the human body in bits and pieces and not as a whole. One specialist’s medication counter acts with another specialist’s medication.
We spend more time indoors and have forgotten to smell the rain and flowers, to feel the wind and hear the birds sing. We do not have time for our children and children do not have time for their parents. We have cocooned ourselves into busy, selfish, grumpy, complaining beings. Christmas or New Year was for a joyful season with cooking smells and the family together. Today Christmas has become a stress festival with the shopping lists and trying to catch up with all those great sales. Credit cards get maxed out and we continue to create our own individual hell. Don’t blame the kids. They learnt it all from us.
Children do not ask to be born. We have children and it is up to us to do what is best for the children. We taught them to be in a hurry, to buy the latest gadget and think I, me, and mine. We did not have time for our children, to listen to their little stories at school. Really listen, not that pretence while our mind is busy thinking of all we have to do, calls to make and a hundred other things that crisscross the mind.
2009 is just around the corner. May be it is time, as someone put it, to take time to smell the flowers. Make time to see the clouds. Feel the wind and rain. Make time for your family and friends and that stress will most certainly take wings. It’s up to us to make time to smell the flowers and feel the wind.
