Of Posting

The post roads of our time are a marvel and a pestilence together. Messages that would have taken weeks now arrive in days, and men conduct their affairs at a pace that their grandfathers would have found not only impossible but incomprehensible. We take this for progress, and in many respects it is. But I find in the cultivation of speed a danger that does not often get its proper examination.

What the post gives us is the ability to act before we have thought. A letter arrives bearing bad news, and before we have properly read it — certainly before we have properly understood what it means and what it requires — we are writing our reply, dispatching our answer, setting forces in motion that cannot easily be recalled. The very efficiency of the system has eliminated the period of digestion that was formerly enforced upon us by the slowness of horses and roads. That enforced waiting was, I now believe, a form of wisdom in disguise.

“The Persians required of those who brought them news — whether good or ill — a full day’s waiting before they made reply; having first slept upon the matter, they found they chose their words and their actions better.”

I travel slowly when I travel, and I have found this to be one of the more useful habits I possess. I see more. I think more. I arrive at my destination knowing something of the country I have crossed, rather than having been merely transported through it. The traveller in haste arrives knowing only that he has moved from one place to another; his journey has been an interruption rather than an experience.

The deeper question is what we are in such a hurry for. Life is short, it is said, and there is much to do — so we must do it quickly. But if we do it quickly, we do it badly, and we arrive at the end having done a great deal that amounts to nothing. A life conducted at the pace of the post-horse may accumulate many transactions and few experiences. I would rather arrive late and know what I had passed through than arrive promptly at a destination I do not recognize.