If You Ever Have to Rush in Life...

   In our family, when some or all of us are gathered together, we like to play games. Card games, board games, any games.

   I believe that it was during one of our family Christmases together, after the smaller ones had gone off to bed, the adults played a board game, one either given as a Christmas present or brought to the beach house by one of the families gathered there.

   Wise and Otherwise is a game of sayings. From around the world they have been gathered and put in a box. If you have not played, it goes like this. One person draws a card and reads the first part of the saying, or proverb, telling from which country it originated. The reading leaves out the ending, and each player completes it on his own. There is a right answer on the card that only the reader can see.

   Each person writes their completion on a slip of paper, and the reader writes the real answer on one also. They are shuffled and read out loud with all of the players voting for the one that they think is the correct one.

   At times, the answers come out so hilarious that the designated reader can hardly get them out from trying to stifle the giggles and outright laughter. What begins as a serious attempt to get it right turns into a "roll in the floor" adult silly party.

   Some of the answers become household sayings of their own. The right answer is quickly forgotten but the made-up one takes on the mantle of a legend. Take for example the beginning:

   "Darkness hides…….."

   and in the subsequent attempt to gather votes, a player writes:

   "the fools shoddy workmanship"

   Realizing that this inside joke may not seem outrageously funny, except to those who were there, you might think we had all gone nuts, as we could not stop laughing (all except the writer of the ending who was wondering why it was so funny, when he wrote it in all seriousness).

   It got zero votes, but the legend was born and is still spoken of today anytime the game is mentioned.

   That is a long introduction to a book I am reading:

   A story of an Australian man taking 3 years to follow in the tracks of the famous Genghis Khan on horseback, from Mongolia through Central and western Asia (i.e. the old USSR) and into Europe at the Danube River.

   As the author moves through Kazakhstan, interacting with the locals along the way, he is given some advice by a man named Baitak, sounding like a saying from our board game.

   "If you ever have to rush in life…"

   "Rush Slowly."

   Isn't it true, maybe especially for me, that when I am rushing around, it is because there is something else that I want to do, and I am about to lose any time for doing it?

   I do not have to look farther back than this morning, as I began to read some things in my quiet time. Near the end of one section was a link to a video that went along with it. When I clicked on the link, I realized that it was 34 minutes long.

   How would I ever get to all the other things I planned to read during that time if I stopped to watch and listen?

   But I did, and it was a message I needed to hear.

   A God Thing?

   I can't say for sure, but I knew it was for me.

   So I rushed slowly through it and was glad I did.

   An old Kazakh proverb, up to date in the 21st century.