K.K.
When I was a kid, I was fascinated by this concept — 2-minute noodles. Boil the water, add noodles and spices; and you’re done with delicious, hot, and spicy noodles. Yum! Yumm!! But this 2-minute life concept is no yum at all!
Everything is faster now.
To eat faster — you have pre-chopped, pre-cleaned, and pre-cooked food. You get groceries delivered in 10 minutes.
To sleep faster — you have essential oils, teas, and treatments.
To succeed faster — you have apps, websites, courses with shortcut lessons, and mentorships
To fall in love faster — you have dating sites and social media
To retire faster — you have investments
To even read faster — you have apps with 5–10 min summaries.
What the is going on? Today’s mantra is, “Live faster!”. But I don’t get one thing. What are we supposed to do by living faster?
I’m not saying these are bad changes, especially faster WiFi and faster pizza delivery. But everything and everyone’s in hurry now. Eat fast, sleep fast, love fast, succeed fast, and then what die fast? Is this why we are in a hurry for everything??
Because in today’s world, if you stop; you are not being productive. You should always be running, working, and doing something. Anything slow is simply a bad thing now.
But can I be honest? I’m tired of all of this constant running, working, and doing. I’m exhausted by trying to keep up with this new faster pace of living. I feel like I don’t even have time to catch my breath anymore; despite everything being so quick, easy, and fast now.
Taking a day off to do nothing makes me feel guilty. I mean how can I? Especially when everyone’s running life marathon’s around me? I feel like if I stop I’ll stay behind, alone and directionless. Like spiders are crawling on my back in a dark, cold cave and no one is there to rescue me. And I don’t like this feeling.
But I don’t want to run through life either. I don’t want to be a hamster stuck in a prison made of obligations, running on a wheel of schedules churning productivity at the speed of lightning. I don’t want the clock to dictate my lifetime.
I want to read a book at my own pace and not by listening to a 5-minute summary. I want to wash, chop and cook my dinner because that is kind of therapeutic. I don’t want to know the secret of making $50,000 a month. I want to explore that myself. I want to fail, learn and celebrate the small achievements that’ll lead to big achievements.
So one day when I’ll be an 80-year-old grandmother, I can tell stories to my cute grandkids, and I can teach them lessons I learned. But by the pace everything is evolving now, I doubt if I’ll even have grandkids or not.
Or scientists will find a way in the next 50–60 years where they will turn an infant into an adult directly. A fully grown adult with all the knowledge, skills, and lessons downloaded into their memory with a preselected job assigned to them. There goes my “to be a super cool Granny” dream out of the window.
That’s it! I don’t know what will happen in the future. That’s not in my control. But today is in my control. And I’m going to make the most out of it. I’m going to live my life the way I want and not let it be dictated by schedules, appointments, and routines.
That’s why I’m becoming a slow lifestyle practitioner.
I’ll still be using, and embracing all the amazing inventions and experiments happening around the world. But I’m going to do all of that mindfully. Taking time to enjoy everything I’m doing. Taking time to observe, embrace and live. That’s what a slow lifestyle is.
You don’t wake up by an electronic alarm to run for work. You wake up by your body’s alarm when you are well rested.
You don’t eat food fast. You mindfully enjoy every bit of it.
You don’t chase success or happiness. You choose your happiness and success.
You don’t run after the money. You walk with satisfaction, purpose, and passion.
You don’t become desperate for love and people’s company. You love yourself and others; so they enjoy your company.
You don’t network with people for a purpose; you make friends to connect.
You don’t learn things to earn more money. You learn things to develop your mind and soul.
You don’t chase anything. Instead, you make the most of everything.
You don’t run through life. You live through life.
