MAD HASTE
ALINA CZERNIAKOWSKA
The centre of the capital city. Traffic jams everywhere, everyone in a hurry, even those who do not have to. Nervousness and stress from the early morning. Cars arrive at kindergartens, parents drive their children. Mad haste, nobody has time, for a while of friendliness, reflection, leaning over a crying baby. A young elegant woman is running out of a kindergarten gate – a mother who has just left her child in a kindergarten. Now, only to get into a car and drive off to a company! Suddenly she trips over and falls onto the asphalt badly. She cries loudly and desperately. An elderly woman leans over her, strokes her on head, looks at bloodied hands and knees, cuddles her like a child. – Oh, God, why do you, the young, rush so much! Why, where? You will get killed – she says as if to herself. – More haste, less speed. The young woman refuses to call the ambulance, stands up, gets into her car and drives off. There is only blood on the street, on which cars go, other people run, as if from the picture of Bruegl ‘Last Judgment’.
Rush, lack of time became fashion, a proof of ability to do everything, social usefulness and modernity today and there is not any other way of living and existing. Somebody, being often asked, where he is rushing so, starts thinking what to answer not to appear to be banal but he cannot to find any wise answer because in fact these are rarely matters worth devoting one’s health, life and family. After all we still remember a 3-year-old girl, left by her father in his closed car on a hot day. He forgot about his child whom he had been driving to kindergarten in the morning. So, who and what was he thinking about?! The little girl got suffocated because she did not have any chance to overcome the modern blockage of her father’s car door. There are many such irreversible tragedies which may not be so mentioned in media.
Elderly people reminisce their parents from pre-war Poland, who fought for Poland and rebuilt it after 123 years of captivity! They built Poland during 20 years, having a big world battle with bolshevism in 1920. Even today we are just proud of this prewar Poland. Those Poles had time for talks, family meetings, respected feasts, Sundays, all national traditions. Someone will say that they had more time because there was not TV, computers, tablets, laptops, smart-phones, iPods, iPhones, mobiles, etc. We catch ourselves on an incredible paradox – after all, all these devices were to make our life easy, make our actions quicker, that is, have more free time for every contemporary man! The Americans write hundreds of books – more popular in our country – about how to overcome distress, haste, fear, how to be perfect in every sphere of life. Textbooks full of sentences, advice which make the man much more helpless and unhappy, and bring fortunes to experts of this rhetoric.
I see in my mind an event from a street of the downtown in Warsaw, described in the beginning – a desperate woman, dressed fashionably, in a good car, sobbing like a child, helpless not only because of tripping over and falling down on the street. What conclusion will she and pedestrians, the witnesses of this mad haste, will draw from this event? Maybe they will stop, reflect find time for a while of a prayer in the beginning of the day, or maybe they will completely change their life and life of their family, giving an example to others?
AA
„Niedziela” 40/2014