There’s a train leaves here this morning
I don’t know what I might be on
The first few minutes of “Stardust Memories” by Woody Allen condensate the sense of our waiting, our hope, our desires but above all our sense of being or not being at the right place in the right moment.
Sandy Bates (Woody Allen) is sitting in a train compartment among people that are the most lugubrous and inhospitable people that one can imagine: he is surrounded by old, sick people with melancholic faces that are branded with dark circles around their eyes, hollow, deformed, horrifying; there is a man that sobs incessantly (without any obvious reason!).
This is not the worst. The worst is that in another train that has stopped on the next platform, Sandy Bates observes a completely different situation:
laughter, happiness, champagne, beautiful girls etc. One of them (Sharon Stone!) throws him a kiss. Returning to the train of Sandy Bates, we see him discuss with an austere and
bureaucratic controller: he shows him his ticket, tries to explain that he, in fact,
should be on the other train according to his ticket, and not on the present one. All in vain! The controller leaves without
dedicating himself to him, whereas the happy and lucky train departs and leaves for ever. Sandy then tries to escape through the back door, then through the windows (everything is barred), he pulls the alarm lever (which
does not work). But there is no remedy… also his own train leaves and Sandy cannot get off any more. Never again.Many of us think we were born on the wrong train that is in a time, society, and family, company that makes our right life departure delayed, blocked or hindered. Therefore they have started their journey with a drawback, a delay, a disadvantage/delay caused by destiny which during all their lives risk making them take the wrong train, thus not giving them the possibility/opportunity to catch the “right” train.
Intelligence is not sticky, but idiocy is so.Furthermore, “I am late” is the most used expression in our society; maybe it equals the phrase “I am tired” which it often is associated with. In short, independently how much we try, running and setting clocks of all types, we
You may be right
Doing what you do
Being with who wins
Changing your shirts
Now stay and see
We know how it will be
We´ll only rest after we´re dead. Everybody wants to travel first class the hostess who
has everything you want
Everybody with a drink in their hand How are things below
How are things outside
How are things outside...
Everybody wants to travel first class the hostess who
has everything you want
Everybody with a drink in their hand How are things below
How are things outside...
are always late. We are obsessed with delays, trains, airplanes, but above all by being late for meetings with our life span, which always seems to have started one minute previously on the platform beside the one we are. We speed up, do more things, but inexorably we continue to accumulate delays. But are we really late? Are we really on the wrong train? Is really that which happens beside us more beautiful and inviting than our daily life? This speed, or rather, this haste has dramatic consequences everywhere, but especially in our companies. Reason, meditation and reflection have disappeared. We have all become assemblers, practical workers, and replicas.
We do not think about what to do, but limit ourselves to doing it, evaluating considerations and consequences during the process. We observe strange behaviour, people that never finish their phrases (speed makes then jump from one concept to another continuously) and that initiate a great many activities that they never conclude (too much time is required to finish them). They prepare the preliminary activities very carefully, then they turn to something else (not enough time).
On the other hand, since they never finish what they do, nobody can tell them they are making mistakes. Speed prevents a careful examination of the world we live in, things and people and all those incredible events that take place around us. We live immersed in a city, a Company which without doubt is interesting (beyond appearances), but due to haste and speed, we know nothing about that which surrounds us, the beauty in opportunities proposed, that externally and due to a superficial reasoning have the air of something unattractive. The way of thinking has become just like the platforms, straight, without curves, without bends, without alternatives, which means that there is no room for "leaving" signs behind. There is no space for growth or thoughts. On the contrary, there is only space for an obsessive thought: “I am on the wrong train”. Who will survive this illness? Who will be able of handling the energy (dosing it in time and not burning it quickly), professionalism (to be consolidated through slow learning) and concentration (stopping to think).
