Because He Could Not Hurry
On the Virtue of Taking One’s Time
Each morning, Hobbes the tortoise clambered onto his favorite sunrock—a task requiring forty-seven deliberate steps and one minor nap. From this vantage point, he observed the world in all its blurry, radiant haste.
“I wandered lonely as a cloud,” he muttered, watching a cumulus loaf sweep westward.
The ants below ignored him. They always did. But Hobbes was undeterred. “Time’s wingèd chariot hurries near,” he warned them, though they scurried on, busy with their crumbs.
Sometimes, Hobbes pondered whether he was the last philosopher. “To be or not to be—such an odd binary,” he mused, “when one might simply be slowly.”
A butterfly landed on his shell. “Tell me,” Hobbes asked gently, “what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”
The butterfly flitted off without reply.
By dusk, Hobbes had reached a conclusion: “Perhaps meaning is a thing one carries… like a shell.”
Then, with great ceremony, he began the descent.
It took him until moonrise.
But oh, how luminous the world appeared when viewed from the slow lane!
Artwork by Síle
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