Pump the Brakes; Three Thoughts on a Slower Way of Being

The pace of our lives is increasing at an insidious and alarming rate. It’s time for a speed check.

An Island of Peace

I’m in the airport lounge, awaiting a flight on another business trip. My sixth trip this calendar year, and we’re only part way through February.

As I scan the lounge, there are clones of me — obvious business travellers; reasonably well attired, all serious, all sipping some form of coffee, all tapping away on a keyboard or creasing a furrowed brow at a screen in their palm, filling the minutes with that Very Important Thing, before bustling out the door, over to the gate and onto the plane.

In the midst of all of this I notice an older gentleman. He’s also well attired, very much so, in fact. He has a glass of water in front of him. He’s reading a book — it looks like a novel, but it’s hard to tell. When his flight is called, he gets up gracefully, dons his jacket, picks up his single bag and walks unhurriedly out of the lounge, pausing to thank the host on duty.

I watch him as he navigates the gate, again intentionally interacting with the staff checking boarding passes, and as he walks towards his plane. He gives off an air of confidence, but no arrogance. He moves with purpose, but in no hurry.

In an instant, I think to myself “I want to be like that when I grow up.” I’m 48 years old.

This Island of Peace in the hustle-bustle of modern life seemed, to me, to personify what we’re beginning to call ‘slow living’.

A Growing Movement

I became aware of the slow living movement a few years ago now, probably in response to getting a little older, attempting to become a little wiser, and definitely growing more wary of the busy-ness of life.

‘Slow living’ is a lifestyle philosophy that emphasises a deliberate and mindful approach to everyday activities; fostering deeper connections with ourselves, others, and the environment. The slow living mindset is more concerned with the quality of our being than the quantity of our doing.

It’s a philosophy that encourages us to slow down the pace of our lives, simplify our routines, and build the capacity to savour the present moment. Slow living encompasses all aspects of life, including work, leisure, consumption, and relationships, with a goal of promoting overall well-being and fulfilment.

The term ‘slow living’ is believed to have originated from the broader ‘slow movement’, which was popularised by Carlo Petrini in the 1980s with the founding of the ‘slow food’ movement.

The slow food movement initially aimed to counter the rise of the fast-food culture by advocating for the enjoyment of locally sourced, seasonal foods, prepared with care and shared with others.

Over time, the principles of the slow movement expanded beyond food to encompass other areas of life, giving rise to concepts like slow living, slow travel, and slow fashion.

Drawing inspiration from Eastern philosophies such as Buddhism and Taoism, slow living encourages the embracing of simplicity, mindfulness, and contentment. While there isn’t a single individual credited with coining the term “slow living,” it emerged organically as part of the broader cultural shift towards more mindful and sustainable living practices.

In the early 2000’s, the slow living movement gained further traction as a reaction to the pressures of modernity — our longer work hours, new digital distractions, and environmental degradation.

Books such as Carl Honoré’s In Praise of Slowness and the popularisation of concepts like hygge (a Danish word encompassing coziness and contentment) helped spread the principles of slow living in mainstream culture.

Why Live Slower?

I think the term ‘less is more’ requires some worldly experience to truly grasp its meaning. I think you have to try and find some meaning in the pursuit of ‘more-ness’ to understand that contentment is actually found in just the right amount of just the right things, and that those things are seldom tangible.

The expectation of the pace of modern life, especially in contemporary western economies and cultures, is largely unsustainable. Our expectation is for life to be able to be lived at pace. Our cultural markers and reflectors (entertainment, news, cultural icons) glorify a life lived at pace and speed, full and rich and opulent and, for good measure, a little crazy.

The measure of success of this kind of life is only ever quantifiable — how much we crammed into life by the way of the accumulation of stuff, experiences, and gram-able moments.

We pad out our CV’s with screeds of achievements. Our BBQ chatter is centred on the ‘what’ of our living, and seldom on the ‘who’ of our being.

The democratisation of achievement that we’re currently experiencing brings with it a learned impatience, born out of a warped sense of expectation.

The hustle economy is, in many ways, the manifestation of this. The technology available to us, and the streams if revenue that technology enables, lures us into working more, spreading our attention thinner, and creating an expectation-experience mismatch.

A key selling point for so many technological offerings is the promise of ‘saving time’. The inference is that we don’t have to spend the time doing the mundane task that the technology improves or replaces, and that we’ll therefore have that time to spend on more exciting/productive/enticing activities. The time isn’t saved, it’s really just repurposed.

This kind of thinking feeds a kind of living that increases in pace.

The equation for speed is pretty simple — it’s a measure of distance travelled over time. In determining the pace of life, the numerator of ‘distance’ is a catch-all metaphor for all that we’re trying to accomplish. The denominator of time is always static. A day is a day. The only variable in the speed equation is distance. The more ground we try to cover, the faster we need to move.

It’s that simple.

The amount of ground we cover that we can intentionally, emotionally, and physically accept as enough, the slower we can afford to be.

It’s that simple.

Slowing Down

Slow living doesn’t mean doing things slowly, although that is a part of it. It is more about doing less things, so that the things that we do put our hands, hearts, and minds to can be savoured and enjoyed.

I think the term ‘slow living’ can create a barrier to adopting the philosophy. We generally and culturally regard ‘slow’ as bad, as the inferior form of what good aspiration looks like. Maybe a better description could be along the lines of ‘less-living’, or ‘savourful-living’

Regardless of the terminology, and the limitations and connotations of that terminology, the adapting to a slower way of being starts with three steps;

1. Notice the speed of your life. Look out of the proverbial window and notice how fast you’re actually going.

Anyone who’s done a road trip in a good car on good roads will know that one of the hardest things to do is to maintain a constant speed, within the speed limit. Good conversation, good music, good scenery, or a wondering mind can create enough of a distraction from the speedometer, and all of a sudden, we’re going too fast for the conditions.

We become unsafe, to ourselves and to those we share the road with.

How often in our everyday lives are we using phrases like “not enough time”, “too busy”, “time flies”, “rushing from one thing to another”, or “back-to-back with meetings”? These are all indicators that our speed is becoming unsafe for the conditions.

The awareness of an unsafe speed requires us to make a choice. We either keep speeding — accepting or ignoring the risk it presents, or we intervene to slow down.

2. Intervene. Stretching the road trip metaphor, in a car slowing down can be achieved in a few ways. All of the interventions are rooted in either the driver’s choice, changing the environment of the car’s journey, or a combination of both.

Nearly a century of organised motorised road travel has taught us that relying on drivers to govern their own speed is a foolish endeavour. So, instead and as well, we change the environment of the car.

We modify the car to limit its speed, and we interrupt the passage of the car by installing obstacles and barriers to unfettered speed. Speed bumps, traffic islands, and lane constrictions are all examples of how the road environments have been modified to limit the speed of traffic.

In the same way, a speed intervention in our lives requires the ‘driver’s’ choice, and adapting the environment and design or our proverbial cars.

Practically speaking, this may look like non-negotiable lunch hours, away from our desks. It could look like moving the TV out of the lounge, or making the TV harder to access.

It may look like a more intentional use of technology, alongside an equally intentioned use of an analogue system or tool. Swap out the smart watch for a good old fashion single function wristwatch. Your phone can do pretty much everything the smart watch can. This isn’t about shunning technology, but rather stepping back and seeing how technology is impacting the speed at which our lives are flashing by.

3. Become okay with not having it all. Back the road trip analogy, the metaphorical equivalent of being okay with not having it all is being a patient driver. It’s being okay with not being the fastest car on the road. It’s being okay with being overtaken.

All night and day this step is about developing a healthier ego. It’s about replacing FOMO with JOMO (look it up). It’s about being able to disconnect the arc of our lives from that of the Joneses.

It’s about being able to create a conscious disinterest in the things that are of no actual consequence, and in so doing, create the capacity for a deeper, more meaningful interest in the things that do matter.

That also means accepting that what is important to us will not be important to everyone, as painful and as wrong as that may be.

Being okay with not having it all also means relinquishing judgement on those that seem to have it all, whether the judgement is laced in awe, jealousy, or distain.

Being okay with not having it all begins a journey to realising what is uniquely important and non-negotiable to us. It helps us focus in on the essential few, rather than being buffeted by the blizzard of many.

At a practical level this looks like a project (whether at work or at home) with a specific and defined scope, and safeguards to negate any scope-creep. This looks like repurposing clothes and furniture before discarding them in favour of the new-and-flash. This looks like watching GOT only because it genuinely interests and entertains you, and not just to keep up with conversation around the water-cooler. And being okay with, and totally unapologetic about, all of that.

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In a culture where burnout is becoming an accepted norm, it’s surprisingly hard to be the one that breaks from the pack and chooses a different way of being in life — a way of being that is deliberately less-filled and seemingly more empty than most.

However, if a slower way of being helps me become a little more like the man I witnessed in the airport lounge, I’ll take it, with arms wide open.