Of late I have been dining a lot with people that eat so quickly. I am one of those that eat slowly and I am shocked when people that I go out with finish their food so fast. I cannot understand how people can enjoy a meal if it is consumed at that speed. It is there this second and gone the next second, or so it seems. I catch myself saying, slowdown people.

Even in my pre yoga avatar, I would take time to sit down and enjoy my meal. I would frown at my colleagues who would eat at their desk, with one hand holding the mouse and eat lunch just staring at a monitor with a big frown on their faces. I simply could not relate to this eating habit, even many years back.

The first time I had coffee at a starbucks in the US, I remember thinking it is just no fun to have coffee from a paper cup with a plastic lid and then I notice so many people just walking with their coffee in the paper cups and having coffee while walking or talking on the phone. This sure was a culture shock to me. I was used to a sit down coffee or tea time. That was the only way I knew back then. And, this is one habit of the western countries that I have not made peace with yet or anytime soon.

Now that I dig yoga so much, I really s-l-o-w-d-o-w-n when I am eating, it is so much more delicious that way. I feel the others that eat so fast are simply missing out on the fun.

In keeping with the topic of change and impermanence, I’d like to take a closer look at one of the most quoted poems of all time. I refer to the “The road not taken”, a poem by Robert Frost that is more commonly, and mistakenly, referred to as “The road less traveled”. The mistake stems from the portion of the poem that is most quoted -

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I -

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.

Shorn of their context, these lines hang in the air like some vacuous inspirational slogan, vaguely self-congratulatory in tone. Here, look at me, I took the road less traveled by, and look where it got me, they seem to say. And indeed this is the most accepted meaning of these lines. It is precisely in this sense that these lines have been quoted in wall hangings and self-help books, in greeting cards and wrapping paper; they have been repeated and reproduced until they have been leached of any semblance of their original meaning. Even the most profound truths will be reduced to inanity by endless (and mindless) repetition – witness the “Serenity Prayer” – and so it has been with this poem as well.

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