Living in the Now, not in the Know

Florida…specifically…Fort Myers Beach Florida.  Beautiful white sand. A narrow island in the Gulf. Dolphins everywhere. Stingray at my toes.  You’d think in a tropical paradise like this you’d find people running along the beach Bo Derik style, but no. Hard core drinking and Fried Grouper with fries is typically the catch of the day. And yet…there’s a certain je ne sais quoi about the people here that I find absolutely intriguing. It’s slow. Painfully slow. But somehow pleasantly slow too. People aren’t in a hurry to do much of…well…anything! They’re more relaxed. They stop and chat on the street corner, the grocer, the post office and the deli as if they have nothing else on their agenda. I’m so confused. Are we on vacation here people? I don’t think so. What’s going on? Don’t we have deadlines? Meetings? Calls to make? Horns to honk? Who’s following up on what with all this idle chit chat? I’m jolted out of my own head when it suddenly starts to rain. One of those fast and furious tropical, late afternoon rains.  I throw in the towel, realizing another day has gone by and not much is accomplished. Leaving my umbrella behind, I decide to walk along the beach, getting totally soaked. Thinking, thinking, thinking…who are these strange people and why do they move so slowly? Actually…I begin to think…and more importantly, it seems,  HOW do they move so slowly? Hmm. With the rain on my back and a cool breeze in the air, I may or may not be starting to think - I wanna get me a piece-a-that! The next morning I’m at a little Greek hole in the wall ordering my favorite spinach feta omelet. Still in a state of ponder, I ask the owner, a tall, thin Greek man with long grey hair and a very thick accent,  how long he’s lived here and why he stays. He said he moved to the beach twenty years ago because it was slow. He said it’s the rhythm of the water. It’s pace; beautiful.  Natural.  It’s the moment. The present. It’s all about living in the Now. Some call it Life. He looked at me with a look of recognition, as if to say “Yeah, don’t worry about being such an ignorant gluck. I was there too. Twenty years ago. It’s never too late to slow down.” He smiled and asked me how the omelet tasted. Never better. And THIS is the point of Social Media. It’s about living in the now, real time, building relationships with real people, and at times, when you least expect it, with people you least expect to be building a relationship with.

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