 The cliche quote “Slow down and smell the roses” has a plethora of applications to the short story Joyas Voladores by Brian Doyle. A hummingbirds average lifespan is approximately 5 years long. If you compare that to a tortoise, whose average lifespan happens to average around 100 years, the two animals are obvious polar opposites. One lives life at a rapid pace in which it has no time to recover from the wear and tear it takes each day and gets burnt out, the other takes things slow and steady, always savoring time and attempting to live at as comfortable a rate as possible. In today’s world it is essential to find a healthy balance of time management or else you’re bound to live both an unhappy and unhealthy life. 

The hummingbird in Brian Doyle’s short story symbolizes a human person. When talking about hummingbirds, Doyle says “They can fly more than 500 miles without pausing to rest. But when they rest they come close to death.” This is very comparable to how if a person is busy all day every day they burn out, usually rather quickly. One example of someone that lived too quickly is Kurt Cobain. Though drugs did play a part in his highly scrutinized suicide in 1994, stress was also an extremely large factor in his final decision to end his life. The rapid pace of living that comes along with being a rockstar can be tough to deal with for almost anyone, for Cobain it was just too tough. When most artists go on tour it is reported that they become very sick towards the end of their road trip. This is because they have worn their bodies so thin from performing all day and staying up all night, that physically they have nothing left. Stress as well can cause some terrible things including obesity, diabetes, heart disease, sickness, and sometimes even worse as the example above shows. It is very important to never stretch yourself too thin. Sleep is a major key when talking about happiness. Those who lack getting a healthy amount of sleep per night often are the ones that become both unhappy and unhealthy, as sleep and weight have a direct correlation. Another quote from Doyle is “It’s expensive to fly. You burn out. You fry the machine. You melt the engine.” This quote directly relates to not putting more on your plate than what you can handle. It eventually wears you down. There’s only so much of the candle that you can melt, and once you melt it down it’s over. You must be very careful when planning. Over scheduling can be detrimental, but at the same time under scheduling can be just as bad.

In life you need something that pushes you. Something that gives you the edge to always want to do better. It can be anything really, a long term goal, a short term incentive, a hobby, almost anything can serve as this pushing factor. Without having something that pushes you to succeed and do more often times you can find yourself settling for less than what you can actually do. As stated in my introductory paragraph, the tortoise can live to upwards of 100 years old. Their lives are preserved for so long because they do so little day in and day out. This can be just as bad as stretching yourself too thin. Living life with as much ease as the tortoise does is very dangerous. Living so slowly can almost ensure that you never accomplish what you set out to do. I’m not saying at all that the tortoise is a lazy creature, but it has many of the same traits as a lazy human being, so the comparison is very obvious. Slow, indecisive, unnaturally okay with doing nothing all day, all of which are traits that the average human with no drive to do better possesses. Living life at a pace that is too slow can also cause you to just go crazy in general. Having too much time on your hands is a very real problem to have. This can lead people to just accomplish nothing and being lazy. From a health perspective, doing nothing is obviously a very bad thing to partake in. An obvious effect to living your life to slow would be obesity. In my life right now, I can not imagine waking up each morning with nothing on my agenda. To just have all day to wander and then go to bed would definitely drive me stir crazy, and I feel as though it would do the same for a lot of people. I enjoy having tasks that need to be accomplished. It gives me something to look forward to each day I awake and lights a sense of urgency deep down inside of me. It gives me a real reason to live, which in the end is what everyone is searching for. A reason to get through the day. 

At the end of the day, it is your choice to live life however you may please. In Doyle’s short story, he says “So much held in a heart in a day, an hour, even a moment.” This statement speaks volumes on the importance of each living moment you encounter. No matter the pace at which you live your life, there is an importance to it .Whether you choose to live quickly, making the most out of all your days and never ever stopping to recuperate, or living slowly, savouring every moment and ensuring that you will always have time for relaxation. From personal experience, I know that it is best to find a healthy balance between the two. You never want to be too busy to the point where you feel as though you have no time for relaxation, like the hummingbird. At the same time you also never want to live life slow and with nothing but leisure, like the tortoise. Finding the perfect mixture between the two can ensure that you live your life to the fullest and healthiest it can be, which is exactly what Brian Doyle would want us to do.