William J.-C. ran his worn broom, its bristles a feathery whisper against the aged granite path, not just sweeping leaves but tracing patterns that only the truly unhurried could discern. Each stroke was deliberate, a rhythm established over 33 years of tending these silent acres. He wasn’t chasing a clock or an efficiency metric; he was curating a space where time itself seemed to pause, sometimes for 23 seconds, sometimes for 23 minutes. The sun, a muted bronze, cast long, lazy shadows across the mausoleums, making the tasks feel less like chores and more like a necessary communion.
The Cult of Speed
It’s a bizarre thing, this modern insistence on streamlining everything. We’ve become obsessed with getting from A to B in the quickest, most direct path possible, believing that any deviation, any pause, any act that isn’t ‘optimized,’ is wasted. I used to subscribe to that creed, meticulously scheduling my days, breaking tasks into micro-segments, convinced that true progress lay in eliminating every single redundant movement. My spice rack, for example, is alphabetized, each jar facing forward, a testament to a certain kind of controlled order. But somewhere along the line, the very things I sought to make efficient began to feel sterile, devoid of the very spark they were meant to ignite. The frantic pace, the constant measurement, it all added up to a gaping hole where satisfaction should have resided. This, I’ve realized, is our core
