Slowing Down And TakingTime To Think About Slow Living
We live in a world where things come at us fast. As Ferris Bueler said in Ferris Bueler’s Day Off, “Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.” How right he was. In fact, the whole movie is about taking time to enjoy what life has to offer and assessing what is important to us. That’s what the slow living movement is all about.
More specifically, those who adopt a slow living lifestyle are intent upon living in the moment; being present; taking time to prioritize what is important to them; doing what is best for them, their families, and the environment; doing less; and doing things better. For them, being busy does not equal being successful. Their goal is to spend time on what they believe matters. Taking the time to do a few things in a fully engaged manner is the gateway to their personal success. Doing a lot of things without taking enough time to think them through is not.
The slow living movement began in Italy in 1981 as a backlash to fast food. Opposing the erection of a McDonalds in the centre of Rome, a group of activists formed slow food to preserve local food traditions, according to the Slow Living LDN website. The popularity of that movement has grown and given rise to numerous other slow ways of doing things such as slow travel, slow fashion, and slow news, all of which are branches of slow living.
Slow living has been adopted more by millennials than any other generation as a response to “hustle” culture, which advocates overworking ourselves to gain success even at the cost of our well-being. At the centre of slow living is the importance of well-being for ourselves, our families, and our environment. Many individuals who have adopted the principle initially just needed to slow down and wanted to find a thoughtful meaningful way to do so.
The philosophy behind slow living is “commitment to conscious living that rejects the
idea that faster is always better. It is about honoring quality over quantity, human
connection over convenience, local over global, presence over performance,” according
to the article What is Slow Living? An Unexpected Path to Freedom, by Candis Williams
on The Slow Year website.
There is nothing lazy about slow living. Many of those who adopted slow living because
they just needed to slow down see it as freedom to choose the pace at which they want
to live their lives. It is a way of being that allows them to make decisions about their lives
through a different way of seeing. By doing so, they have discovered contentment in
that sense of freedom.
Perhaps slowing down and thinking about living our lives in a more thoughtful and meaningful way isn’t such a bad idea and one we should give more importance to.