The Slow Movement:Taking your time and feeling good about it

SLOW MOVEMENT

Taking your time and feeling good about it

I never had the patience to engage myself in mindfulness, yoga, meditation and all the other techniques to stress down . On the contrary, I felt stressed by all the medical, psychological and fitness magazines´recommendations of how to relax, whether it was a question of listening to whales or repeating mantras, doing pilates and God knows what else, to make room for yet another suggestion, that of slowing down, to find time for genuine relaxation, spiritual or social since being booked up and on the run had become an integral part of my professional life.

A decade ago, or so, I learned about the slow movement, which to me,seemsthe only reasonable thing to do. It needs no instructor or guru, dogma or particular excersises. It just points to the fact that, as far as possible, you become your own master of time and to cope with all the demands with reflective slowness, no matter how irritated your circle of friends or colleagues become.

It does not mean becoming an intolerable slacker annoying your employer or ignoring your social and emtional committments. It means to deliberately take a more reasonable time to everyday life chores and limit your acessesability. I can assure you it takes time before you learn to slow down your pace without pangs of guilty conscience and fear of the opinion of your surroundings or social networks. If you loose some friends or are being accused of being anti-social, so be it! We are not biologically and psychologically obliged to take an interest in everything and everyone, although we have been led to believe that by intense contributions in the private and public sphere is what makes you a better person.

The speedy changes in all fields of life and the world trigger off a continuous overdrive, hormonically and biochemically in general. Some things cannot be changed. You will still be obliged to make sure that your children are sent off to school on time, to make sure to remember social committments obligations and the working hours but small changes in how to cope with ”reality” can change your reality, because what is real may be regarded as very unreal when you start to think about it.

The common order to please others and indirectly yourself by being updated on most everything, always on the alerte and ready for action does not exist in the animal kingdom nor in fauna. Animals mobilizes their forces in order to feed and fauna obeys the constellation of stars and in the intermissions theyrest, much like rural life only a hundred years ago.

To start living slowly means prioritizing and sacrificing and you may loose the affection of some friends or relatives, a decrease in your Curriculum Vitae merits and keeping up with the latest technical devices to consume but, I can assure you, once you get used to eat slower and to reflect on how and what you eat, on what social events to attend, on the wordly havoc invading your private sphere with perpetual violence, sensationalism and competition, you will start to notice that drama, seemingly insignificant, takes place in your garden plot or your own attic if you still cannot live without it.

Being a mature and responsible family member and a good relative may be sufficiently dramatical and, I promise, timeconsuming enough if you want to get it right. It is not a matter of escapsim or turning your back on the world. It is a matter of becoming a more patient and harmonious earthling with ambitions intact, only changed.

By changing habits that have taken over our persona you will not become a new one, but your authetic self. Do not start the day by turning on the radio or the television to instantly become stressed by the loud news anchors shouting at the top of their lungs about all the catastrophies, atrocities and violence and horrifying news which have occurred while you may have been forced to take sleepingpills to get some kind of rest after you have seen the late television shows with vampires, criminal dramas or doomsday talk-shows because you will take them with you in your sleep, whether you are aware of it, or not.

Do not fear that you may have missed the latest news because they will catch up with you, sooner or later, and sometimes later may be better because you have found the time to exhale..Find a time and make it clear to family or friends that you need an hour of time out in your personal private sphere, if possible, on a daily basis.

Arrange with you bank to pay steady and repeated basic fees and bills so that you can avoid the stress at the end of the month. Make an inventory of what you already possess and think thoroughly through if you really need the things that are occupying your mind and desires. For those of us who live in countries with a reasonable or good standard of living, let us give room for doing things in a slower speed and you will find that your own capacity to focus, to reflect and to avoid unnessacary commotions and consumer´s goods, will graually develop to a calmer, nicer and less greedy person who find the time to be kind to yourself and your loved ones.

You do not have to be a Beverly Hill´s Wife or a world record athlete in order to live a substantial, good inner and outer life. And it will soon start to show, even physically, when good health and reason change your appearance for the better. If you are chronically ill or maladapted to the speedy world you are obliged to slow down and do what you can to cope. You may, to an extent, slow down the process of bodily and mental exhaustion and collapse by consciously lower your tempo and to enjoy everyday life without limelights or headlines. Your personal inner triumph may not be displayed in public but, I can assure you, you will become less dissatisfied, less envious or over achieving and less of a threat to yourself, psychologically and healthwise. If you are being met with annoyance and irritation by your family, your circle of friends or your colleagues at first, explain and hand over the responsibility to cope with the new situation themselves. It will pass.

You do not have to read the latest high-brow novel or Nobel Prize Winner if you do not want to. You do not have to know about the latest findings in quant physics nor who is topping the Billboard list. You do not have to listen to some hundred different recordings of Mahler´s Urlicht to find the most exquisite. Anyway, nobody truly likes a besserwisser even if you are being flattered. The contemporary 60 plus are the new forty plus ! Of course not. Plastic surgery does not make anybody look forty. It ”helps” you to look odd and wrinkleless but still not forty.

With enough time you will become attractive on so many levels. No longer picking battles that are of no significance. No longer obliged to have the last word. No longer hypertense and competetive, overly critical and increasingly intolerant because of failing to live up to a superficial world of merits and cunning. You will be liked for who you are and not for what you believe you must be. When you jump of the wagon of competition you will pose no threat and, dear God, people are in dire need of a compassionate, calm and trustworthy person behaving with discreet dignity and calm self assurance...

If you are scared of being seen as a looser, think again ! Who´s life do you want to live? Your own, or somebody else´s ? The latter is not possible. Why not feel good about yourself?

You will never be alone...

Douglas Modig