This article was first printed on May 12, 2011

I love shortcuts. Love them.  I hate to stand in traffic, for instance.  I hate traffic lights (although, I wouldn't want to live in a world where they didn't exist.)  I take the side streets.  I ride parallel.  I like to loop.  I hate to stand still.  First of all, it's hot, so I prefer to feel some wind on my skin as I traverse this dusty little rock.  But more importantly, I hate having to live on somebody else's time.  I want to choose when and where and how I enter and exit.  Shortcuts are the Bahamian way, aren't they?  Why would you take the long way there, man?  Why?
Of course, the short cut is a specialty of modern living.  Modernity seems to be all about doing things faster, in less time.  We never stop to wonder if our faster, if our less, is better.  We move across the earth's surface faster than ever, in cars, trains, boats and planes.  We send packages to one another through the air instead of on the ground.  We overnight it.  Bump snail mail.  We want our messages to be received instantly; even e-mail is too slow; so we "chat" on line. We use a calculator instead of our brains.  We microwave our food instead of resting it on a fire.  We use washers and dryers instead of cleaning and drying the old fashioned (and let's admit, the harder) way.  We staple our stomachs so we don't have to exercise or make ourselves stop eating.  We take diet pills, energy pills, sexual stamina pills, sleeping pills, uppers and downers, rather than work on ourselves.
And we in The Bahamas are particularly fond of short cuts.  We hate waiting.  We take pride in walking past a line of chumps and whispering something to the person behind the counter and getting what we want.  And those of us in the line don't cuss and carry on; we just wish we knew the woman behind the counter ourselves so we wouldn't have to stand for hours like the other chumps.  Shortcuts.  That's why we buy driver's licenses, bribe this one, and bribe that one.  And that's why we know not to waste our time applying for jobs we see advertised.  We cultivate people and they call us when there's an opening. It's the "who you know" system: a shortcut culture.
But this love of short cuts in The Bahamas gat us jam right up.  Jam right up.  The thing about it is that once you develop an appetite for quickness, it would take a force of nature to slow you down again, dare I say an act of God.  There are some things, crucial, critical things, that can't be achieved quickly.
Lives are supposed to be built deliberately.  Maturation is a process that, by design, ought to produce a fully formed, wholly developed end product.  Children don't pop out of the womb and then sit up and start talking, nor does a boy become a man by osmosis.  No matter how much we faster we do things, we have not been able to speed up the rate at which we mature.  In fact, everything seems to indicate that when we force growth there are harmful side effects waiting to unfold.  Give a fourteen year old a baby and yes, you may force her to get a job, earn her keep, and "be a woman", but in so many other ways she still can't help being a girl and she will continue to make the mistakes that are common to children.
I write about my own children pretty often, and I confess that it's sometimes hard to slow down long enough to really concentrate on them and move at their speed, which is super slow compared to mine.  When I do, however, I breathe easier.  I relax; I become quiet; and I really notice their needs.  I'm more aware of who they are and who they are becoming.  I'm more conscious of the investment of time and patience that is required to rear them into smart, compassionate, godly men who can take on families of their own one day.  I hardly notice that when I'm rushing about "doing things."   I want them to grow and develop at a healthy, natural pace, but if I don't live my own life at a healthy natural pace, then what am I modeling?
We want the end result but we don't want the pains of process.  We want to be the boss but we don't want to pay the cost.  But force ripe taste bad.
Take David.  Chosen of God.  But before he could be king he had to walk with the king. Serve the king.  Fight for the king.  Even endure the king.
In my own life, I want things fast.  I want things quick. I want it now.  Now. Now.  I deserve it, I say.  But it don't work like that.  Short cuts lead to dead ends sometimes.  More and more, I tell you, God is saying, "Wait!  Shut your mouth.  Keep still. And wait on me.  You want what you're not ready for.  What you can't carry, you want to hold.  I'm not finished the work I've started in you and the harder you strive for what you think you should have, the more frustrated and exhausted, the more distanced from Me you will be."
This nation is force ripe.  And the taste has the young men's teeth on edge and their stomachs sour.  More next week.

IAN STRACHAN is Associate Professor of English at The College of The Bahamas. You can write him at strachantalk@gmail.com or visit www.ianstrachan.wordpress.com

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