It was 6.30am on a Monday morning.

Weaving my way through the speed humps on Nicholson St in Burwood on my way to work in my ute, I was suddenly shaken to sense a speeding car overtake me on the narrow street. It was a seven series BMW and it did fly over the speed humps a lot better than my Mazda Ute.

The driver was certainly in a rush to get somewhere – rather than just showing off his driving prowess or his upmarket car.

Then a couple of days later, I was on the Hume Highway in Burwood and literally slowed down to a halt to avoid hitting a very old man who just wandered across the busy highway to get to the other side. He was nowhere near a set of traffic lights… and he must have been in a hurry to get to the opposite side of the Hume to take the risk.

Yet he showed no rush in wandering across the road – he was focused on the other kerb, without even a look at the oncoming traffic. All the time that I took to come to a near stop, he did not once look in my direction. He seemed in a hurry to cross the busy highway (even to the point of endangering his life) – but he was in no rush to get there.

The third part of this trilogy happened a couple of years ago. My dad got discharged from Concord Hospital when he went terminal and he went home to die. It took 6 weeks.

And very often during the second half of the dying process, he would comment to me that it seemed to take too long for the end to get to him. All I could say to him was that we can’t rush these things…

I have chosen to lead a busy life and there is a certain degree of panic and rushing around to finish my ‘to do’ list every day. I have to deliberately stop myself when I start rushing around by asking the question “what is the worst that can happen if I am late?”

The answer to that question so far in my life is “Nothing much…”

I remember rushing up to a race in Newcastle on a Saturday afternoon (Cervelo Cup) with Shirley in tow. I pulled up in my car at the start line just as the bunch rolled out for the race. I had paid my money and driven two hours – just to be late. It felt like the end of the world.

We just drove down the road to downtown Newcastle and had a lovely afternoon in a restaurant to compensate. And it was quite a pleasant alternative to speeding around with the peloton. And the world did not end – like I had feared.

I have imagined all sorts of nightmares for being late. But have been proven wrong every time. It is ‘for no apparent reason’ that we get into a rush in life…even though we constantly try to find valid reasons to satisfy the “Are we there yet?” mindset.

There are no valid reasons why we should rush – just lots of fabricated ones…