How not to live slow
by Kim De Vries
Some years ago a new restaurant trend emerged, "slow food." The idea was that everything would be prepared lovingly (and thus slowly) by hand and enjoyed by people taking time to really focus on and savor their food. As someone who aspires to be a gourmand, this certainly appeals to me, but, sadly, I've never had time to try a slow food restaurant.
I don't mean this as a joke. Whenever I've visited a city that has some of these restaurants, I've generally been on a tight schedule and could not take time for such a lengthy meal at which I did not talk shop or work somehow. Thinking about it recently, I realized that in fact, I never have time to eat a meal like that, or to cook one. This realization left me feeling that somehow I'd mislaid my own principles in the mad rush to create my own life.
On Slowfood.com, participants in the slow food movement say "We believe that everyone has a fundamental right to pleasure and consequently the responsibility to protect the heritage of food, tradition and culture that make this pleasure possible." I hold this belief as well, and yet my own life seems to have moved in a direction that makes it impossible. My husband and I both work full-time as university professors, which means well over 40 hours a week each. And we have two toddlers, which means that any time we are all home together, we mostly are tending them. When toddlers are around, you can't really focus on anything except the toddlers; they make sure of that.
So here we are, running from dawn to well past dusk, the house is a mess, the meals are rushed, the yard looking ready to reclaim the house and return to natural and verdant chaos. How did this happen? The superficial answers are obvious: where we are, housing prices are very high, so are gas, health insurance, etc. We moved here for my job and found these attendant expenses, compounded by a lack of public transport and health issues in the family that make the most comprehensive healthcare essential. So it would seem we are sort of stuck. Well, I don't buy it.
But what can we do? Trying to find answers, I discovered recently that the slow food movement had grown to encompass a broader set of principles, "slow life," and that here and there slow cities were emerging and espousing a "cittaslow" approach. The term and the idea originated in Italy, but cities in countries from Japan to Sweden are embracing a slower, less competitive, more sustainable approach to design and to life in general. Not surprisingly, America has few slow cities, but surely we could adapt some of the same strategies. And what are these strategies? Funny you should ask…
It was surprisingly difficult to find practical suggestions for how to slow down. Or at least practical suggestions I could implement in my life as it is. I cannot, for example, turn my rental house into a suburban farm cum craft studio and make my living selling homemade herbal soaps or bread. In fact, that's a pleasant fantasy, as is closing the town center one day a week, and making my own biodiesel fuel. However, these options and most of the others I found at first involved rather large up front investments and sometimes lengthy involvement in local governments. While all of those strategies seem worthwhile, and while I really would like to raise my own goats and sell cheese while running an inn, surely there are things I can do with my current job, house, and budget.
So, I did some more searching and finally adapted some simpler suggestions from Wikipedia –which in spite of its faults I find very useful. So if you want to try slowing down with baby steps instead of a giant leap:
* Take up a Slow hobby, like knitting, yoga, painting or gardening.
* Bake your own bread the slow way, with a sponge that rises over night.
* Spread out your chores; do one load of laundry each day instead of all at once, or dust one day and vacuum the next.
* Stop watching the clock; on weekends try waking up to your body's natural rhythms rather than an alarm (if you don't have small children), and leave your watch at home.
* Shop at a farmers' markets and farm stands.
* Join Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) or another coop farm.
* Prepare a sit-down meal and savor it without watching TV, or reading.
* On vacation slow down; don't try to cram every sight into your must-see list. Visit "slow cities" with local restaurants where you can eat slow. Or, think about how to vacation happily at home.
* Prune your to-do list; make time for the people and activities that you enjoy
A lot of the practical suggestions boil down to just deciding to do less, and maybe buy less. We are only stuck if we assume that we have to have so much and do so much and that without help; and that we have to follow the prescribed patterns of full-time work typical in the US. So the next time I feel frantic, smothered by so many things I have to do, I will ask myself, are these things really essential? Do they forward my larger goals? If the answer is no, then why kill myself trying to do it all? By not spending time on things that don't support my goals and ideals, I hope to have more time living up to my own principles. It's a relief to decide that I don't have to be a superperson, I just have try being a good one.