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Letter to the editor

Guest Column

Life is best enjoyed at a slower speed

By LESTER ARADI
Published October 10, 2007

Many years ago in Chicago, when my elderly father was alive, I would pick him up Saturday mornings to take him shopping. Often we enjoyed a nice lunch together at a restaurant of his choosing.

On one particular Saturday he had his heart set on ribs - not just any ribs, mind you, but Carson's Ribs. Being a little low on money, I pulled into a bank drive-through to stop at the ATM.

As I reached out the car window to put my debit card into the ATM, my father asked what I was "putting into the wall." I explained that I was getting some money from my bank account.

After several more questions from him and my attempts to explain ATM transactions, my father hung his head and said that life had passed him by. That was near the end of his life and served as another opportunity to learn a valuable life lesson from this wonderful man.

Life is moving past us at a faster rate than ever before. Who in my age category would have ever imagined people walking around with Bluetooth ear pieces, talking to other people holding hand-held jukeboxes that double as a telephone and television?

I'm confident that in my lifetime we will have microchips surgically implanted on the bone behind our ear to let us dial up someone and silently talk through our thoughts.

We can't explain to younger generations the joy we experienced with LPs, Pullman train cars, and listening to the national anthem being played on television at 1 a.m. when the network broadcast concluded for the day.

How about: "It's 10:30, and curfew is in effect. Do you know where your children are?" Don't get me going on that one. Now we have 13-year-olds roaming the streets of Ybor City at 3 in the morning because their parents don't have the time, or care, and the courts allow it. When I first started as a policeman, we actually had parents calling us and asking what time curfew was. A lot fewer kids were getting killed in those days.

Yes, life is moving past us at a faster rate than ever before. And our impatience has grown. We've become accustomed to getting everything we want in the blink of an eye. Massive amounts of information and transactions are available at the touch of a keyboard.

Remember having to actually go to the library, flip through the cards to locate books, and actually read the books to find the information we wanted to type our term papers on a manual typewriter? Say what?

Unlike my father, most of us have kept up with rapid change and even embraced it. We thrive on virtually everything smaller and faster. This is evident in the speed that we drive.

Even I, driving an unmarked but very obvious police car, am passed by people every day who don't have the time to notice their surroundings. Best of all, they are usually waiting for those of us doing the speed limit at the next traffic light.

One of my favorite country groups, Alabama, recorded a great song. It goes:

"I'm in a hurry to get things done, oh

I rush & rush until life's no fun.

All I really gotta do is live & die, but

I'm in a hurry & don't know why."

So the question I raise to you is, will life pass you by so rapidly that one day you find yourself tired and spent? Or can you slow down a little bit to give an extra hug to a loved one or a pleasant hello to a stranger or, most of all, say that all important "please" and "thank you"?

I know what our parents would have hoped. Dad, this one's for you.

Lester Aradi is chief of police in Largo.

[Last modified October 9, 2007, 21:23:14]