If life is passing by too fast, you are passing up too much.

From Alfred’s journal

A woman jogged the same loop past the feeder four times this morning, and by the fourth I knew the sound of her before she came around the hedge. She never once looked up, though the maple above her had gone the color of a struck match overnight. For years I thought speed was the thief; I blamed the clock, the way everybody does, and wrote a dozen lines against hurry that I have since torn out. If life is passing by too fast, you are passing up too much. Switch came down at noon and spent eleven minutes with one acorn, turning it, and I could not say the morning had been longer for him, only fuller. The maple is still there this evening, and so is the hedge, and I do not know whether she will see either of them tomorrow.