THE SNAIL, AT A SNAIL'S PACE

When we are obsessed with speed and dream of surpassing the speed of light, after badly outdoing sound; it is refreshing to pause for a while and have an attentive look at the snail. I was more familiar with them, when I was small and growing but soon forgot them I gradually got busy competing with absurd people who loved and showed off their success by provoking me and many others to hurry up. The dominant ethos of the society, which is stark materialism, convinced me enough to join the rat-race of achieving things at the shortest period of time with minimum efforts and therefore, I had to cling  to the credo of ‘better’, ‘more’, and ‘excess’ to remain respectable and alive. I won some races and lost many more to condemn myself and feel sorry to pacify myself and earn the approval of those who scored the points over me. When I regretted about my incompetency, naturally I had to praise the winners, who with tremendous jugglery, cunningness, hard labour and luck collected the prizes and proudly showed off. In the beginning I envied them and wanted to worship those doers and considered the as wizards. The super human group had lots of things which I was bereft of. This is how I started to believe in fate and accepted miseries willingly without much protest. I found myself degraded to the near lowest rung of existence at times, feeling tired and exhausted. I had less of name, fame, prestige, wealth, power, property and lots of any and all such types of tangible and intangible things that constantly goaded me into apparent submission. I lost my arrogance and became humble to deny the defeat. It went on and on till I discovered the bruised successful people cowering for peace in their hiding, in spite of having achieved everything; just like me. They too had insurmountable insecurities, pains, sufferings and defeats-they were tired of their beautiful wives, educated sons, married off daughters, aged parents, the legal authorities, lavish lifestyles and bouts of emptiness.

To discover the emptiness of the elites of the time, I took a very long, profusely perspiring in the winter and shivering in the summer.

Today, after a chance encounter with the huge garden snail, I somehow started to recount the ‘them’ and the ‘me’ for an honest appraisal while none was around. It transformed me and lifted to a greater height. The snails are also beautiful animals though famous for their abysmal low speed in a fast spinning world of ours; while in fact, our own existence is in actually in jeopardy, due to the gradual slowing down of the rotation speed of the earth and cooling off of the sun.

But, then, I am just not an animal. I have to suffer for being slow as an ordinary human being. They (the Haves) too have to suffer for being fast & furious, as an egregious ‘something’. In life, this appears to be the rule than the exception. We have to make a choice, what we want to be and what really makes us happy. It only comes to that, finally.

However, the snail is a 'loser' in the 'rat race'. 

Afterthoughts: Snails are innocent and harmless creatures and an essential element of our fragile environment. Please do not eat them raw or cook them with spices for serving hot at dinner or supper time, if that is not absolutely indispensable. Don’t taunt some people as ‘moving at snail’s pace’ or brand the postal communication as ‘snail mail’. You are discouraged to go for snailing, too. Remember, speed is not everything in life but worth is. We need to slowdown for time to time and pause also, when it is necessary. We need not run like the Cheetah in the wild. Appreciate a snail for its species nature.

Noted Below: Since I have to go out for some work, I wrote this post for posting in my blog at ultra lightning speed!

Believe me, I actually have too many pending work to attend to!!

It is just another thing that I am in a hurry!!!

I finished the writing under five minutes, flat; or maybe, I don’t know cause, my watch has slowed down due to a bad battery or malfunctioning for some mysterious or unknown reasons!!!!