Impatience is rampant and the run-up to Christmas will only make it worse, writes Grace Wynne-Jones. So why do people rush around, living life in such a hurry?
Much has been written about speeding on Irish roads, but speeding on Irish pavements is equally common. In fact the Irish capital not only has courier companies called Cyclone, Asap and Hurricane, it has pedestrians who race along its streets as though their lives depend on reaching their destination as soon as possible.
Impatience is rampant in Ireland's larger cities and as Christmas draws near it will fuel more car rage, queue rage and general get-out-of-my-way rage.
"It's like the week before Christmas every day here now anyway," says an acquaintance. "There's a sense of urgency to everything," observes another.
The new buzz phrase is that we are a "work-rich but time-poor" society. It's a phenomenon that has prompted the Economic and Social Research Institute to conduct its first Irish National Time Use Survey, the results of which are due to be published before the end of the year.
"Ireland now has more dual-earner couples and a lot more people in employment," says Frances McGinnity, research officer with the ESRI who headed the survey. "People spend a lot more time commuting, and the rise in wages means they have more money to spend."
The survey included the question: "Do you feel rushed or stressed during the diary day?"
"Certain groups do feel more rushed and stressed than others," says McGinnity. "It seems to depend on their family and employment situation."
New technology has contributed to our speedy habits. In all modern societies workplaces are busier and it is the high-tech equipment that often set the pace and not the employees.
"Mobile phones make us incessantly - often pointlessly - available," Kate Kellaway wrote in the Observer newspaper. She added: "How would Wordsworth have got on wandering lonely as a cloud with a mobile in his pocket?"
Speeded up society has sent hordes of people scurrying to retreat centres. Psychoanalyst and writer Adam Phillips is not surprised by the growing popularity of retreats. "People are aware of having too many external stimuli," he says. "What do you hear when you stop listening? The question is about whether anyone has an internal world anymore."
"People are under more pressure these days," says RTÉ's Joe Duffy. "There is so much gridlocked traffic that when people get out onto the open road they speed. This is a difficult country to get around in. The Celtic Tiger is driven by people who get up at 6.30am and work incredibly long hours to pay their mortgages. This can result in them being more rude but it's because of the pressures they are under. We need more flexible hours, especially for parents. And we need more childcare support and less waste of the taxpayers' money."
Communications guru Terry Prone confesses that she "loves deadlines and impending disaster and being double-booked and having three phones going at the same time. The adrenalin rush is mighty". As a business consultant, however, Terry says she would regard rushing as a major problem. "This is mainly because it inhibits listening. Someone in a mad rush to get to the next thing misses the thing that's right in front of them. They miss the trailing wires, the indicators that something's amiss. Great managers have two things in common: they never give the impression of being rushed and they always listen closely. Fast-talking, fast-eating interrupters may look impressive, but they're rarely good managers. Nor are multi-taskers. Any research I've come across suggests that multi-taskers do a lot of things half-effectively."
She adds that "the other factor is the health implication of rushing. Some of the behaviours adding up to what's been called the Type A personality are pretty good predictors of heart disease. Type As tend to have a sense of extreme time pressure, quickly get hostile under pressure and have fast explosive speech."
Radio and TV presenter Derek Mooney says: "I think people are working harder because they have more bills to pay, and of course many of them are making long commutes to work.
"I am involved in about 10 different things every week. I get bored when I am on holiday. Other people probably think I'm rushing but I've done it since I was 14 and don't know anything different."
Novelist and poet Philip Casey has included a poem called The Time of No Time in his new poetry collection entitled Dialogue In Fading Light (New Island). In the poem's last stanza he writes: "Daily we spent hours/ In the isolation units of our cars/ Stuck in the loop of the round trip./ It was the time of no time."
"A lot of my life is a rush," says PR consultant Paula Mullin. She is in her 20s and says that she and many of her friends make a big effort to wind down at the weekend and she herself does yoga.
"The Celtic Tiger has brought a kind of speed into our lives that we are not used to," comments counselling psychologist Ann Marie McMahon. "It's as though we can't live with imperfection anymore. We want it all now. When we rush we don't listen, especially to ourselves."
McMahon is the author of a number of books including Be Your Own Friend. She believes we need to make sure that our children don't also end up with unnecessarily hectic schedules. "Listen to them. Find out what they really want to do. They are not all pianists and ballet dancers."
Cultivating inner calm can result in an increased sense of contentment according to a US survey. It found that areas of the brain connected with serenity and joy are unusually high among practising Buddhists. So if you find yourself rushing around like a blue-arsed fly this Christmas it might be worth asking yourself if it's really necessary.
The Truth Club by Grace Wynne-Jones is published by Tivoli (€9.99)
