In my meditation materials, I have a very powerful picture that helps me remember to take my time. A friend of mine from Israel is very active in organizing Israelis and Palestinians who've lost children in the struggle and who want to create something else out of the misery. So one of the steps was to write a book in honor of his son who had been killed; he used the energy that he suffered from to go in a different direction. He gave me a copy of the book. And even though it was written in Hebrew and I couldn't read it, I am glad he did, because I opened it up, and there on the first page is the last picture taken of his son before he was killed in the battle of Lebanon. On the son's T-shirt it says, "Take Your Time." I asked my friend, the author/father, if he had a bigger-sized picture that I could have to help me remember. I told him why those three words were so important to me. He said, "Then let me tell you also, Marshall, this will probably make it even more powerful. When I went to my son's commanding officer to ask, 'Why did you send him? Couldn't you see that anybody you asked to do that was going to get killed?' he said, 'We didn't take our time.' That's why I put that picture in there of my son."
It's critical for me to be able to slow down, take my time, to come from an energy I choose, the one I believe that we were meant to come from, not the one I was programmed into."
My Israeli friend also said, "Marshall, I'll give you a poem written by an Israeli poet who was influenced the same way you were when he saw the picture." And the first line in his poem is, "Take your time, it's yours you know." And I have to keep working at that because, as my beloved partner keeps pointing out, I forget it, and I start to race."
Marshall Rosenberg
Living Nonviolent Communication.
