Why Slow Living
“Some of us don’t want to be tough alpha leaders. Some of us just want to write and wander the garden and breathe in the sky and nourish and nurture and quietly create new pathways and live our lives as our art. To know the earth as poetry.”
— Victoria Erickson, Rhythms and Roads
When someone asks me why I moved to Portugal, not knowing a soul, never having visited, not knowing the language, I say I came to write and to be at peace. That’s true, but it’s incomplete.
The truth is that I came to meet the deeper longing to contribute from who I am, not the ego identity, but from who I am as the expression of life itself.
It sounds heady, but it’s not really.
I believe that we are spiritually the expression of life,
seeking to reach our highest potential of that expression
from the highest regard for who we are as that expression.
(You may need to read that a few times.)
To make that a bit easier to consume, we are life seeking itself.
This required not only a mind shift but an entire life shift. A paradox arises. To be the highest creative expression of life through my writing requires less. I needed less attachment to the outer world and yet to remain connected to our humanity and all living things. But this connection had to arise from a place of stillness and flow rather than from a place of action and the drive to make things happen. I recognized that I needed to create the conditions for flow and creative expression.
Although I say I came to be a writer, I meant that I needed to design a life where I could fulfill the potential of life expressing itself through me.
And that, to me, is how I view slow living.
Slow living is a misnomer. It’s not so much about being slow as it is about being present and intentional. To be at my most creative requires me to be present to the life around me and within me. I’ve had to divest myself (as much as possible) from the noise of life and decide intentionally what I say yes to and what I say no to.
My friends often fear that I will become a hermit! I won’t, but I am used to being WITH myself. I enjoy the silence and the joy of mornings in my garden listening to birds. I sometimes struggle with an attachment to technology in a digital age where all our answers are found on Google. I’m tech competent and enjoy technology as another form of creative expression. And I also see how addictive it can become.
But I digress…back to slow living…
There are many definitions of “slow living,” to the point that it is dangerously close to becoming trite. I suggest that even in a busy and hurried life, you can include the essence of this lifestyle through the lens of presence.
You can take five minutes to breathe deeply after a meeting.
You can listen to another person as a witness without planning your response.
You can pause to notice a beautiful flower or appreciate the smell of a great meal being cooked, or smile at the grocery checkout person.
These are all part of slow living - of being present to life.
To shift the quality of your attention is different than paying attention to everything, including the noise.
You can do this no matter how busy you are.
I remember reading about a social experiment conducted by the Washington Post. A man started playing a violin in the subway during rush hour. Most people rushed by him; a few dropped money in his violin case, and some even paused for a moment before rushing on their way. However, several children stopped to listen, only to be pushed on by their parents. He played six Bach pieces for about 45 minutes. When he finished, no one noticed.
No one recognized the violinist. It was Joshua Bell, one of the foremost violinists in the world. He played one of the most intricate pieces ever written with a violin worth 3.5 million dollars. He had played to a sold-out audience only days earlier.
It begs the question. What else do we miss when we are not present to life?
Slow living, for me, is the antidote to how we function when we are on auto-pilot in our lives.
Pausing to listen to a violinist, to notice the almond blossoms as spring approaches, or to enjoy bird songs is not going slow to go slow. It’s to pay attention so we don’t miss the beauty, and grief as well, around us. All of it comprises a life.
A better question might be:
If I am the expression of life,
seeking to reach my highest potential of that expression
from the highest regard for who I am as that expression,
then how do I design a life to be present to life itself (all of it)?
My answer is slow living.
I’d be very interested in your thoughts on slow living. What does it mean for you? Please let me know in the comments.
