Today we ask that you be patient with the slow, steady processes of life.

If you look at the way life works, generally things do not happen quickly.  It takes time for plants to grow.  The more complex the plant, the more time it takes.  Trees take many years to grow.  But they also live for many years.

So it is with animals and humans.  Healthy growth requires time and patience.  It takes nine months to gestate a healthy human infant — and many, many years of patient nurturing to create a healthy adult.

Yet in this modern age a great premium is put on speed.  People want things now.  Everyone is expected to do things faster.  Grown adults have become as impatient as little children, throwing tantrums when they cannot get the things they want right now!

This is an extremely unhealthy, counterproductive approach to life.

Making things quickly necessitates that they be somewhat disposable.  Nothing is built to last.  There is a shoddiness to the work people do and create, as a result of the rushed nature of their labor.  And this pervades everything.

In nature, some things proliferate very quickly — and on the whole they are not things that humans like.  Viruses proliferate quickly.  Bacteria proliferate quickly.  Fungi proliferate quickly.  Certain insects can proliferate quickly.  Usually when these things proliferate quickly, it is a sign of a decaying, diseased, unbalanced system.

In the human body, healthy cells take time to grow.

But cancer cells proliferate quickly.

Forcing speed can be extremely damaging to life forms.

In healthy development, it is all about the process, not the end result.  It is all steps and stages.  New things gradually take form, growing little by little — imperceptibly, to the human eye.

Certainly there is nothing wrong with the great advances of the internet age, and the capacity humans now possess to rapidly access information and connect with each other.

But to the degree that this encourages impatience and the need for instant gratification, this is not so good.

Nor is it good to demand that companies or economies experience constant rapid growth. Indeed, that is a “cancerous” pattern.

Please remember this.  It is okay sometimes to push and sprint, but that cannot be a way of life.

In nature, the one place one sees constant rapid growth is in viruses, bacteria, and cancer.  Constant rapid growth is not healthy, and not sustainable.