“Rome wasn’t built in a day,” the old saying goes. “Stop and smell the roses,” says another one.

All the time, everywhere I go, all the people I see, everyone seems to be in a hurry–me included. Hurry up, hurry up. Get there, do your thing, and hurry on to the next thing. Rush rush rush.

Oh, and the freeway–how many people do you know that can drive in rush hour and not get frustrated?

It’s killing me, this rushing-around thing. Faster, ever faster. I want to get off the merry-go-round. Who’s keeping me on it, anyway? Only me.

Time is too important to be rushing around all the time, colliding with this and that, being a human pinball.

So for the next few days, until it becomes a habit, my mantra is going to be, “SLOW DOWN”. Drive leisurely (sometimes — I like driving fast), take time with lunch and dinner, lose the franticness that has invaded my life, notice the things that show up–pay attention. I’ve missed too many of the little pleasures that make life enjoyable.

I know most of you know this. I did too. But I lost it somewhere along the way, and now I’ve rediscovered it.

Stop and smell the roses. What a concept.

Think and Grow Rich, Napoleon Hill

UPDATE: I made a mistake with this post; I didn’t mean to actually publish it in the manner I did. In the interests of continuity and feedreader clicks, I’m leaving it up, but with a caveat: to see the full explanation of the PDF and Think and Grow Rich, please visit this page.

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Once in a while, a book comes along that has the power to change lives–millions of them–for the better. Think and Grow Rich, by Napoleon Hill, is one of those books.

Hidden within its pages, visible for those who are ready to see, is the wisdom of the ages. Wisdom so profound that it is often passed over for more complicated reasoning and conjecture. The wisdom that is in Think and Grow Rich will, if you learn and embrace it, guide you to riches and wealth well beyond what you can imagine today.

Distilled from a 16-volume work that was the culmination of 25 years of research into the success secrets of the worlds wealthiest and most successful men, Think and Grow Rich has helped more people build wealth than probably any other published work. Hill studied men such as Thomas Edison, Andrew Carnegie, J. P. Morgan, the Rockefellers, and dozens of others, to find and quantify just what qualities these men possessed and used to become wealthy.

I was driving home late last night (about 11:30 pm) from an outing that included a trip to my fav hot springs. It’s in kind of an isolated area, about 30 miles from Boise. It was one of those ‘dark and stormy nights’ that open the cheesiest novels.

I passed a small rafting outpost/store, and a man stood up with a large towel wrapped around him, presumably to keep warm. He stuck his thumb out. I drove on by.

You have to understand: this stretch of road is isolated. As in very little traffic that time of night. When I’m out in the woods, I normally carry protection, usually in the form of a handgun. Tonight, I had nothing, not even my pocketknife.

I drove on about a mile, thinking.

I turned around and went back.

I was thinking, “He looked kind of straggly, and we’re out in the middle of nowhere. Do I take a chance and give him a ride? What if it were me?” Then, “What if he tries something? I’ve got nothing to protect myself…”

I passed the outpost parking lot, saw this huddled mass in close to the road. Still there, he was. So I went to the next wide spot and turned around again, headed back in my original direction.

I slowed as I approached the parking lot. The man stood up and stuck his thumb out again. My headlights revealed what looked like a middle-aged guy, dressed in dirty clothes, with a long, scraggly beard. It was drizzling rain, and in the 40s.

I drove on past. I remember thinking, “Sorry, guy. I just can’t take the chance.”

So I left him there. Today, it still bothers me, and I don’t know if I made the right decision. There’s a certain fear in picking up strangers, especially in the middle of the night in the middle of nowhere. Duh. But there’s also the helping-hand side of life.

So what kind of person does that make me? Mean for leaving him there, or smart for considering what could have happened?