One thing that makes life so much more pleasant is to avoid making things more significant than they need to be. Some people are experts at reading undue importance into decisions, timing, and choices. They ask questions such as these: “Why did she decide to do X this year when last year she turned down Y which was very similar? What does this mean??”

Something I saw a few days ago in the Arts section of The New York Times gave me a fascinating reminder that assigning importance to that decision or this timing may be completely irrelevant.

The story was about Maestro Riccardo Muti. Maestro Muti had just announced that he would become the musical director of The Chicago Symphony Orchestra. This was big news in the music world. The Times put it like this: “In a classical music world of diminishing grandeur, the orchestra has hired one of the last lions of podium glamour…” Mr. Muti had been music director of the Philadelphia Orchestra from 1980-1992. He most recently had been music director at the Teatro Alla Scala in Milan until he resigned in 2005. (more…)

Ah, the wisdom of Johnny Depp. We can imagine Johnny’s saying the words in the title above (which quotation sites do attribute to him) in one of those Pirates of the Caribbean movies where the good guys must cross big expanses of ocean to fight with the bad guys or to find a safe haven for themselves. But can’t each of us imagine calling out–“Now, bring me that horizon”—as a way of living our lives? The origin of the word horizon is from a Greek word that means bound or define and is akin to the Latin word for boundary. Dictionaries remind us that one use of the term horizon relates to the limit of a person’s mental perception, experience, or interest.When people want to “broaden their horizons,” they want to broaden their “outlook, perspective, and perception.”

What determines how far out are our individual horizons? Someone said once that we all live under the same sky, but we don’t all have the same horizon.Personally, I’m glad we don’t all have the same horizon…because I like the variety of what all of us see “out there” in front of us. I like a miscellany of perspectives and perceptions and areas of interest among the people I know, the authors I read, the commentators I listen to. (more…)

There are new movements, and then there are new movements. How about something called The Art of Living Slowly? This organization, begun in Italy by Bruno Contigiani, is spreading rapidly! (Is that a contradiction in terms?)

You can find a lot of websites that are part of the “slow movement.” I just bought a cookbook called The Slow Mediterranean Kitchen and have one called Slow Cooking: Not So Fast Food on my wish list.

There was a Slow Day—on a Monday of all days—in New York City recently, modeling itself on the World Slow Day that occurred earlier in Italy. During World Slow Day people received citations for walking too fast. Participants in a Slow Day marathon attempted to travel 656 feet without stopping, in no less than an hour and 27 minutes. People walking through the center of the city during rush hour had their speedy movement halted when someone stopped them to hand them a poem. (more…)