We all have a rhythm, a pace or a tempo that carries us through the day, weeks and even years. This pace is unique to us, but it is also the result of conditioning, whether cultural, familial or professional. What happens when we are pushed around by people who don’t have the same look as us? Very often, we feel irritated, whether or not the pace is superior to our own. These repeated confrontations with different rhythms irritate us and we prefer to move away from them because we think that this saves us from a possible contamination.
Sometimes it is necessary to acclimatize to someone else’s rhythm in order to see the world in a different way. This is unpleasant at first because it involves “stepping out of yourself”. Yet the change of pace is what really allows for the change of life. The people around us are good or bad guides. Sometimes we must imitate them, sometimes we must do the opposite. We all have to learn from the models as well as the counter-models. The effort of empathy and patience necessary to adapt to a slower pace is a victory in itself. Likewise, the will and energy one puts into keeping up with more intense rhythms is also to be commended.
On the sea, many winds can blow. If we were a boat, we could be satisfied with a light breeze that would carry us towards a destination with calm and serenity. We could contemplate in the distance, a squadron carried away by gusts of wind whose speed contrasts with a more than uncertain destiny. The desire to fly like the wind is tempered by the fear of being caught in a storm. Life is not really a race, it is good to learn to sail with the agility of a rowboat, the assurance of an ocean liner or the determination of a battleship. In the end, we will never know which pace suits us if we don’t do what is necessary to see life from the deck of the boats that cross our path.
