Speed Kills

“Scientists tell us that the fastest animal on earth, with a top speed of 120 feet per second, is a cow that has been dropped out of a helicopter.”

- Dave Barry

“It is not by muscle, speed, or physical dexterity that great things are achieved, but by reflection, force of character and judgment.”

- Marcus Tullius Cicero


Speed kills. That’s what Mom told me for the two years leading up to me getting my drivers license back in 1977, and for the 30 years thereafter, until her death in 2006. She always wondered why it took me less than six hours to get to the farm, while it took her and Dad some 7 + hours to get to our house.

“Um, Mom...well, you see, I drive really, really fast. That scholarship the Iowa Highway Patrol gives at our high school? I fund that.”

Speed, I trick myself in to thinking, allows me to squeeze two days in to one. Five weeks in to a month. Yadda, yadda, yadda. The “illness of the urgent” keeps muscling the “clarity of the important” in to the wall in turn #3, and we tend to come limping past the checkered flag all smoke and sparks and carnage as a result.

I did it twice today, that I am aware of. “How quickly can you get me that?” I asked someone...

I wonder what it'd be like if we strived for a scenario where we asked, “How long do you need to really do this to the best of your ability?” or “When are you comfortable that you could have the best possible plan for that issue?”

I wonder what it would feel like to finish the race, or a lap, for that matter, hitting on all eight cylinders, engine humming, low to the ground and really screaming along with no sign of damage apparent.

I wonder if time spent on reflection, force of character and judgment, wouldn’t help us feel less like the cow dropped from the helicopter.

Just sayin’…