Date: 2008-11-02 11:52:02 Created: null
For the past year I have been walking to and from work every day, health and weather permitting. It's a nice thirty-minute walk with or without music, not too many streetlights and no steep hills to climb. It gets my circulation going a bit before and after sitting still all day, so it's relaxing everyday exercise.
Well, most of the time.
I think most people agree with me that it can be really annoying to find yourself walking at the same pace as someone right in front, behind or alongside yourself. My pace is relatively brisk, at least compared to the dog-walkers who tend to make up the majority of other walkers, and bikers of course just wosh past. So normally I've been able to move along at my own speed, feeling disconnected from people in general and free to meditate on whatever I choose.
Until I discovered the Couple.
The Couple walk too. I imagine they've been walking together for years, because they keep a steady, brisk and perfectly synchronised speed despite being rather different in height and leg-length. All fine so far. The problems are twofold.
First, they seem to begin working at similar hours as I.
Second, they walk ever so slightly faster than I do on my own accord.
Put together, it means that I've been on my way to work, peacefully contemplating the composition of the universe at my own pace, only to have them come swooping out from a crossing street and ruin all my concentration. If I keep walking at my normal speed, they will ever so slowly pull ahead of me which is kind of annoying. But if I want them out of sigh (and, hopefully, thus out of mind) I have to walk at a somewhat quicker speed than I really want to, thus making the walk to work feel somewhat stressed and race-like instead.
I've told a few people about it, and I don't know who thought of it first, but it feels pretty likely, and somewhat curious, that the Couple are at least slightly aware of the situation too. Does it bother them? Have they discussed it? Do they wonder who the stressed idiot in the orange-and-black-striped scarf is? At least they have someone to talk to on their walk, I'd think that makes it easier to just ignore stuff like this.
In short, it's an everyday annoyance only the highly evovled human mind could create for itself. Once we develop ways to deal with ideas like this, true transcendence will be near.
I bet dolphins laugh at things like this all the time ...