Finding a balance

I just returned from driving my fiancee's car across the country, taking it up from Atlanta back to Minnesota. As I was riding I noticed the real tension involved in such a trip. On the one hand both me and my co-pilot/brother needed to get back to Minnesota by Wednesday. (We left on Monday) On the other hand there were several opportunities that I missed along the way. I drove right past Beloit, where I went to college without getting a chance to stop in and walk the grounds and visit my old professors. Our stops were few and quick, never pausing to really appreciate everything we were passing through. (Granted a lot of it was the barren fields of Illinois, but still) Now, my brother and I did make serveral stops, visiting my future grandmother-in-law, as well as stopping at her parents for the night and a friend of mine for the night. Both of these stops were great and made the trip feel less rushed. I guess what really struck me was trying to figure out balance between haste and noticing life. It seems like something we all have to deal with in different ways. When do we become so fixed on a goal that we forget the people along the way? At the other end of it is the times where we get so fixed on the people and stopping for each of them we never achieve our goal. I would like to think I had a decent balance given the circumstances, on my trip, but I was just struck by how much haste dictated my actions. Too often it seems we get caught in a bind of what has to happen and cannot take the time for the full process that should happen. Maybe being aware of the tension is enough, but it seems like there is a lot we need to be thinking about and trying to balance as we hurtle through life and stop and smell the flowers.