Many of my readers know I walk my dogs early.
Every morning. Rain or shine. Hot or cold.
We launch at 5:15 a.m. like a tiny, furry expedition team with no clear destination but very strong opinions about squirrels.
By 7-Eleven they greet the regulars like minor celebrities. One gets ear scratches. One attempts to unionize for more Slim-Jims. I get bad coffee and quiet companionship. It is, somehow, sacred.
Some mornings we head into the woods.
Other mornings we circle the neighborhood and end up at the field so they can run like Olympic athletes who forgot what sport they signed up for.
And more often than not… at exactly 6:00 a.m.
We see him.
The white Jeep Cherokee.
He comes down the street like he is late for the invention of time.
Stop signs are treated less as laws and more as helpful suggestions from people who clearly don’t understand his schedule. He blasts past in a blur of panic and horsepower, engine screaming like it also has performance reviews.
The first time, I was furious.
We were on the same side of the street. My dogs froze. I froze. The Jeep whooshed by like a weather system. For a moment all that remained was wind, exhaust, and the unmistakable feeling of someone trying to outrun their own morning.
The second time, I was annoyed.
The third time… I recognized the pattern.
And if you know me, you know I love a pattern. I can find meaning in coffee stains.
Now, after seeing him a few times a week for over a year, I don’t feel angry.
I feel sad.
Because I know that man.
I was that man.
There was a time when leaving the house two minutes late felt like triggering a national emergency.
If I didn’t hit the first light by 6:07, the next landmark by 6:19, the bridge by 6:31 - clearly the entire day would collapse and I would arrive at work sometime next fiscal quarter.
Commutes become strange math problems.
If this store by this time.
If that exit by that time.
If I just push harder.
Meanwhile you’re fighting traffic.
Fighting bad news on the radio.
Fighting thoughts you don’t want to have.
Fighting the quiet voice asking, What exactly are we running toward?
Or worse.
What are we running from?
This morning I saw my friend in the white Jeep at 6:05.
Which means in his mind he was already catastrophically late.
Five minutes behind schedule.
Five minutes behind life.
He flew toward the stop sign like time itself was chasing him with a clipboard.
And I tried to wave.
Not to correct him.
Not to judge him.
More like…
I see you.
I know the tight chest and the mental stopwatch.
I know the belief that one small delay will unravel everything you worked so hard to hold together.
You might say:
Why doesn’t he just leave five minutes earlier?
Friend.
If it were that simple, the world would be full of calm people with matching socks and no unresolved emails.
We don’t just run late on the clock.
We run late on ourselves.
Late to our own lives.
Late to noticing the dogs who think a patch of grass is the greatest miracle ever performed.
I don’t live like that anymore. Not because I had a spiritual breakthrough while organizing my calendar. Life… helped me step off the hamster wheel.
And now I stand in the half-light holding leashes and lukewarm coffee, watching people speed past the very lives they are trying so hard to build.
There has to be a better way.
I don’t know what it is exactly.
I just know this:
If we don’t slow down on the road…
At home…
Inside our own minds…
Eventually something will slow us down.
The law of averages always collects.
And one day you wake up, not five minutes late for work -
But years late for the only life that was ever actually yours.
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