Patience and Energy

I find myself acting with more patience as I get older.

Do I not care anymore? Is there nothing in life really important enough in my life--or any one's life--to rush toward? Does futility fuel my slower pace? Or am I just growing tired, lacking in the energy that is required to move at a young man's speed?

Perhaps I am conserving the little energy I have, knowing that energy, like life, is a finite and exhaustible thing?

Or perhaps I finally understand the warning of Benjamin Franklin: "Haste makes waste."

There was a joke I remember from my youth, a chauvinist joke to be sure, but just because a thought is politically incorrect, does it make it automatically less true?

The young bull and the old bull were standing atop a hill, gazing longingly at the herd of succulent cows below. They hesitated in their coupling desires, however, because surrounding the herd, guarding them, was a brace of cowboys with steely, watchful eyes and long firearms.

As the sun began to set, however, and the cowboys began to return back to their ranch house and sleep, the young bull, seeing the cowboys and their guns leaving, his mouth wet with desire, said to the old bull: "Let's run down and mount a few." The old bull stopped him, standing in his path; and swallowing his last mouthful of grass, stretched, farted and said: "Let's walk down and mount them all."