In defense of slowness…

I think that we have in many ways lost track of ourselves.  The pace of modern life and all of the many overlays created by technology have been ruthlessly hurrying us along at ever-increasing speeds and we are suffering for it.  Ironically, we do not even have time to really consider what might be underneath that subtle feeling of discontent, the nagging feeling that something is off, that something is very wrong.  We know on some level that we were never intended to move this fast or to do this much.  And yet, we have become accustomed to it.  We have adapted.  We have changed in the face of the requirements of modern daily life.  And in so doing we have become our own captors.  We now require busyness to affirm our worth; to validate our importance; and to define the boundaries that separate us from each other and from the world.  When we step away we feel less valuable somehow.  What will the world do without us?  A better, more important question is: What we will do without the world?  Not that I am advising that we abandon our lives – or quite impossibly the world – but rather that we must slow down in order to sink in. 

We cannot know ourselves well unless we take the time to really sit with ourselves. 

It is an uncomfortable exercise.  One that many now avoid in the way that we simply could not in a time before electricity and central heat.  We no longer time our days that the cycles of the world around us.  The sun setting does not mean the end of the workday.  The winter is no longer a time for stillness or quiet contemplation.  And so as comfortable as we are lucky to enough to be, we are in many ways utterly lost. 

I feel like this lost-ness defines us culturally.  I have spent time in many countries and cultures where folks felt less lost to me.  They still have time for each other; time to sit quietly; time to simply be.  Most of the places that I have visited have, by comparison, very few of the comforts that we enjoy and yet they are wealthy in many ways that we are not.  They know themselves.  They value kindness and humility and community.  They are staggeringly, heart-wrenchingly generous.  They are not alone and they know it.  It defines them in the same way our possessions and our titles and our busyness define us.  Their families matter.  Their communities matter.  Weekends are sacred.  Lunchtime is uniformly and formally observed.  There is always time for coffee.  Even if it is taken from chipped cups in a place where the coffee itself is rationed.  I have often felt the difference acutely upon returning to the US.  I no longer have time.  I am always in a hurry.  Other people are farther away somehow.  We are less connected to each other even as we are chained to the technology whose singular purpose is connection.  We often feel so very alone. 

I think that there is a notable and important movement back to the silent and the scared.  Back to stillness, to community, to each other and to ourselves.  We have to trust that our worth is inherent in our very beings. That it is as much a given as the breath that keeps us alive during our time on this glorious planet.  We are worthy and we hold the potential to matter deeply to one another and to the world, if we would only slow down enough to realize it.  Our gifts are inherent. They are immutable.  In silence they will find us. 

We need only sit quietly long enough to hear them whisper.