Nature never asks "Are we there yet?" In nature there is no rush. But it gets stuff done ok. While human productivity - making money, things, creating and processing information - has accelerated 1000-fold, have trees learned to grow faster? Maybe they have. An evolutionary biologist might be able to tell me. Regardless, nature's way is so much calmer than our frantic striving. Although all life has an agenda - to achieve its potential - as humans we often hijack and distort it. We get jacked up on adrenaline in our desperate craving for achievement. Wherever it is, we can't get there fast enough. And yet, however better, faster, stronger we become - our yearned for destination recedes to a further, distant horizon as each mountain is scaled. We never arrive. The failing of the Rat Race To be fair, nature never arrives either. It keeps calmly, relentlessly, going - day after day, year after year. But, again, there is a qualitative difference between our desperate striving and nature's purposeful unfolding. The difference is that we are obsessed with results, whereas nature is blissfully immersed in process. Don't get me wrong. Results are great. The successes and achievements of our lives. The vision that gets us out of bed each day. But the great failing of the rat race is not the stress it causes. It's the enjoyment it steals. It takes away the possibility of enjoying things for their own sake. And this is the only enjoyment there is. It is the only source of joy, awe, wonder and love too. We can only enjoy ourselves when our attention is on what we are doing rather than longing for what it will get us. Smell the Roses The calling that is innate to all living things - a whispered vision of who and what we are called to be - is like an inner spark. A pilot light. It can't be extinguished. But when we fixate on arriving there, or at any stopover on the journey - having the project done, the dishes washed, the commute over, the promotion achieved, the kids successful - we deprive that spark of the oxygen needed to live vibrantly now. To be mindful is to honour the action, not only the result. Savour the process. Smell the roses. Engage in this way and we are not so subject to the winds of success and failure that otherwise toss us around. They are just the seasons. The rising and setting of the sun. The arising and passing away that are points in a wonderful road trip.