Waiting is an integral part of life
By Lethbridge Herald on February 11, 2025.
Dear Editor,
We love speed and hate waiting, even though we know it’s easy to make mistakes when we are in a hurry. Nevertheless, we prefer instant gratification. So we do stupid things because we don’t slow down. We must slow down, look around, and think where we are and what we are doing before we act. Slow down, stop, and think. You will find that you waste time by being quick and save time by being slow.
When it is snowing the speed limit of Whoop-up Drive is 60 km/h (rather than 90 km/h). It’s a busy thoroughfare connecting downtown with residential West Lethbridge. How many people follow the speed limit? Very few. So accidents happen often due to drivers who ignore the speed limit. They tie up traffic for hours, as many people know from the recent traffic jam on Whoop-Up Drive. That’s how you can lose time by speeding.
Have you measured how much time you gain by speeding in a city? Only a few minutes.That’s not worth risking your life for. It is a common knowledge that the largest number of accidental deaths in North America happen on the road by cars in high speed. In the U.S., more than 200,000 people die every year by road accidents. That’s more than 500 deaths a day, which is worse than crime, fire, illegal drugs, or natural disasters. We are killing each other by the thousands so as to save a few minutes. I prefer to spend more time than losing the only life I have.
We fight against time. But time is not against us. Events we look forward to always seems to come too slowly because we do not accept the natural pace of time. On the other hand, when you want things to move slowly — when you begin thinking about your own mortality for example — time flies fast. We must know that trying to make time move faster, or slower, is futile, like trying to avoid death. Though we can see how much money we have in the bank, we cannot see how much time we have in our life.
Waiting is what we do in life. Waiting may come with anxiety and dread. Many of us have been feeling this as we wait to see the impact of US tariffs. Often we have no choice about waiting and that causes anxiety or fear. But neither emotion solves the problem. Neither emotion speeds up time or changes what is inevitable.
Waiting may also involve hope, patience, and faith. Hope is the feeling that something is worth waiting for. We hope that whoever/whatever we are waiting for will appear and make good on its promise. Hope is believing that there is a light at the end of the tunnel. So we wait. Instant gratification is cheap and fast, and ultimately expensive; it does not sustain us in the way that patience or hope do.
Life is impossible without faith. Faith is stronger than hope but less certain than facts. Faith is not necessarily religious in nature. I have faith in the bank who keeps all my money. We have faith in money, a mere piece of paper but enables us to have what we want. We have faith in the people we love. Are we 100% sure? No. Nothing in the future is certain but faith offers a glimpse of hope and gives us strength to carry on. Faith helps us manage the anxiety of waiting.
We wait because we are alive. Don’t try to skip it. Too many good things are going on in life, here and now. Waiting with patience allows us to notice them. So slow down! Stop and think. Try to calm your anxiety or worry. Accept waiting as an integral part of life. It will give you time to be human.
Tadasgu (Tad) Mitsui
Lethbridge
12-11
Was westbound on Whoop-up yesterday about 3:30 pm. A school bus was nailed to the 60kph limit . I expect not following traffic laws is a good way to loose your job if you drive a school bus. The problem was , the flow of traffic (and I mean everybody else, probably 50ish vehicles) was doing about 80kph. So, everyone was swerving and taking chances to get around the bus (the only one doing the right thing, btw) .
I think a cop just parked at the bottom of the hill with lights flashing probably would have equalized the traffic.
So , is it safer to adhere to the speed limit or follow the flow of traffic ??
I know I’ve wandered from Tad’s topic a bit…
And yet, last week I was doing 65 kph in the Whoop up drive 60 speed limit coming east, and had a City of Lethbridge Access a Ride bus come speeing upon my tail, then he swung into the other lane and blew by me. Westbound later in the day I had a Lethbridge Transit Dodge Caravan coming flying up on my tail and then blew by me. Again, I was doing a little more than 60 because I was almost geting ran over doing the speed limit.
But I now have dash cams front and back to show the insanity on Whoop-up. Scenic is no better and if go 80 on Scenic, there is always someone who rides your tail and then flies by.
There is no policing in Lethbridge anymore, because the Chief of Police doesn’t want to be over powering, so the rest of us have to suffer. And downtown, well that is another story but the same old, same old, just another pile.
I appreciate the police on the streets trying to do their jobs while handcuffed by leadership, but at what point do we say enough.
Their budget was increased to counter crime on our streets, but I have to say I almost blew out my neck muscles when I heard 7 EMS were being trained for the Tactical Team so when members or public are injured, they have immediate treatment by paramedics, not the Tact team who were been trained, while EMS, staged 2 blocks away come to the scene.
Now I know some are saying, shame on you for not wanting our police protected. Stop! Think now, how many police or civilians have died in Lethbridge because the Tactical Team didn’t have a paramedic on the team to administer immediate aid? None! So at a time when we have some of the highest crime rates in Canada and the two highest crime areas in the city downtown, does it make sense to blew a close to $1 million on this?
What are the chances of this happening in the next 10 years.
My point: You give the police more money to deal with the immediated crisis at hand and they squander it.
If you have seen some of the Tactical Team operating at a incident, you see EMS within a block, and members of the team are trained to provice immediate emergency care, just like special operations teams.
I for one am not impressed with the decisions leadership makes with our taxdollars and as a business owner downtown by Galt Gardens, I am very upset with the leadership in this city, period!
Speeding tickets do not go over well in the school bus department. Six speed on green cameras, three each way, would fix the problem. Could easily be declared a high accident area and isn’t that what photo radar is for.