I’ve realized recently that in spite of all the many gadgets I own which promise to make me smarter, freer, more efficient and happy in every way, I am none of these things. Instead of being calm, cool and collected, I frenetically run from place to place and task to task, being everywhere and nowhere at once.

This is no way to live, but we fall from the mold with such habits already shaped:

On pretty weekends in the summer, this riverbank is the very verge of the modern world. It is a seat in the front row, you might say. On those weekends, the river is disquieted from morning to night by people resting from their work

This resting involves traveling at great speed, first on the road and then on the river. The people are in an emergency to relax. They long for the peace and quiet of the great outdoors. Their eyes are hungry for the scenes of nature. They go very fast in their boats. They stir the river like a spoon in a cup of coffee. They play their radios loud enough to hear above the noise of their motors. They look neither left nor right. They don’t slow down for–or maybe even see– an old man in a rowboat raising his lines.

((Wendell Berry, Jayber Crow, 331))

I would like to reclaim my life. This is the year of the tortoise– of deliberation, intentionallity, simplicity.