Slow Living in the Real World
Anything in life needs rules, right? From card games to baking, we need guides and rules. It’s true too when defining how we are going to approach life.
My college career was spent studying healthy habits and wellness through leisure. Whether it was using leisure activities to regain health after an injury or incident, or to preserve a healthy lifestyle. This was at a time when Slow Food and Locavore concepts were coming into vogue and “Slow Living” was introduced into the collective consciousness.
So what is it?
Slow living is a radical lifestyle choice in a culture that considers BUSY the norm and exhaustion a status. It is a conscious decision to create a more contented life by:
Reclaiming your LEISURE time
De-emphasizing “JOB” as a defining metric
Acknowledging that wellness has more worth than your NET
I recently read an excerpt from a series “You’re Growing” by @thestorytellerco Morgan Harmer Nichols via instagram: poetic, charming and exactly what I want to say:
GROWTH There is nothing wrong with slowness. All around you in nature, a billion different things move at a slow pace, just as they are supposed to. No flower is rushing to be somewhere else. No wave is pushing its way to the shore before its time.
If I had to define my whole personal ethos in one word it would be BALANCE. Finding yours might be easy, I struggled and took inspiration from Brene Brown in Dare to Lead. She asks you to define your priories, and suggests that if you have more than three, what you have is a nice list; not priories.
Just because the priority is one word, doesn’t mean it’s not a challenge:
Balance isn’t something that you find. it’s something you create - Jana Kingsford
So what about spaces…
I am not a minimalist. I am a wabi-sabi-ist, and believe that we should be surrounded by Beautiful Things. So how to decide. How to keep it from becoming clutter? My guide is this:
Have nothing in your homes that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful - William Morris
And fundamentally, I believe that our happiness requires rituals. What takes a habit and transforms it into a ritual? Our intention and our presence, the ability to be in the moment.
In an age of speed, nothing could be more luxurious that paying attention - Pico Iyer
You can have all three or pick your favorite. I encourage you to find three-five quotes that help you edit your life in a way that affirms your commitment to slowing down and being present.
