Slow Living: my story
how it started; how it's going and, why you might want to give it a try
Happy October 31st!
This beautiful autumn morning marks the beginning of my fifth year of slow living. I only remember because holidays are big doings in my family after my mother was raised not being allowed to celebrate (and seems to be ever compensating for those lost years of making merry). Also, this particular Halloween was the last holiday I celebrated in the U.S., just after finishing grad school in California and right before moving to Germany, marking an abrupt change in how, when, and which holidays I would enjoy, in my new life. Making my costume (a chicken that year) while baking and chatting over tea with a dear friend and classmate, the topic of slow living floated through the room with the scent of pumpkin pie and our hopes for the future - How we’d enjoy marvellous careers and retire at the ripe age of 35 to travel the world before living out our cottage-core fantasies on homesteads (of course), with hens named after famous actresses.
Now, some years later and about 6,000 miles away, I’m sitting at the antique dining table, another cup of steaming hot tea in one hand and my favourite pen in the other, grinning at the memory. The crisp autumn morning gently stirs the leaves on the terrace just outside the open door. I’m 35 and, although my life looks vastly different than I may have dreamed back then, I take joy in recognizing that the story is unfolding as it should; unexpected and beautiful. The sun is shining in the way it does only at this time of year and I realise,
somehow I made it. I made to right here, right now, truly content living for the moment in my own little postcard for slow living.
A few meters away, a tiny redhead stirs and slowly opens his eyes. I know that I have approximately 15 seconds to get to him before he realizes that he’s hungry and therefore extremely displeased. I take the first seven seconds to savor another sip of tea and the view of my plants on the terrace. The mum especially catches my eye; delicious sunset orange blossoms from an unassuming little bush that has somehow survived the last three winters without any help from me. I rise and go to the baby, content to leave this quiet moment behind.
This is my life’s pattern, for now; time to myself is divided into thin slices throughout the day, my world existing mainly within 200 square meters.
For a habitually spontaneous (read: indecisive) person, the sudden loss of freedom to impulsively fly through my day sometimes feels like an awkward pull in two directions. One is the comfortably familiar spontaneous and somewhat chaotic way in which I have done things for most of my adult life, and the other is an unknown but perhaps my true North, a path of challenge and the deep satisfaction in the selflessness that is motherhood. Perhaps matrescence is akin to breaking in a good pair of leather boots – it may take a while, but in truth, a fleeting bout of sore feet is a small price to pay. In actuality, my whole body is slightly sore, but it is a wonder of nature that I really don’t mind. Motherhood has flipped a magical switch in me, that would allow the tiniest of smiles or the grasp of miniature fingers around my own, to make the sun shine on my would-be teetering state. Motherhood is in many ways a practice in slow living.
For those unfamiliar with the term “slow living” (I know you’re reading this, Mom), it is essentially the opposite of living the rat race that is so ubiquitous in Western culture. It’s another kind of magical switch, that if properly installed, can redefine the mundane. I’ve come to define slow living as a sort of walking meditation and a discipline in self-love that is deeply intertwined with both my faith and gratitude practice. The goal is to foster more presence daily for the things that really matter but the real magic is that one may find new meaning and worth in the ordinary. Journalist Carl Honoré has written a lot on Slow Living and gave a wonderful TedTalk that is certainly worth the watch (HERE) if you’re wanting a deeper understanding.
Alfred North Whitehead once said, “We think in generalities, but we live in details.” How very true; to appreciate the details requires the dedication of forming a habit that does not seem to be part of default human programming. Another quote, this one by Eden Phillpotts, written on a tattered sticky note, has been folded snug in my diary for a decade. It reads:
“The world is full of magic things patiently waiting for our senses to grow sharper.”
This quote is often attributed to William Butler Yeats but in actuality it appears to have been taken from an early 20th century botanical book in which a Mr. Phillpotts discusses the utility of a magnifying lens to better admire plants and reveal their tiny, beautiful details which may otherwise go unnoticed. Indeed, sometimes we need the help of a tool, a life-changing experience, or the reminder of a tattered sticky, to sharpen our senses and fix us on the here and now.
I wonder how many insignificant yet special details I have missed over the years before I knew how to look closer …and how many I still miss. For me, slow living is a lens through which I uncover tiny wonders otherwise hidden.
My interest in slow living started as part of my personal renaissance. I longed to somehow reconnect with my rural Pacific Northwest roots and a time when I ran free and rode bareback for hours through rolling hills of cow pasture and dense forest. When time seemed to stretch out comfortably on long summer days and my life made sense to me in way that didn’t require further thought or explanation. Simplicity, purpose, and nature’s rhythms were the cornerstones of those days. It had been 10 years with an ocean and two continents between me and my oak trees by the time I desired to find my way back. Back to that version of me. I needed to relearn how to be satisfied.
Patchworking together my current, literally foreign, life and those elements of back-when, I began to simply spend more time outdoors, find company with animals, and learned to create nutritious meals with local, seasonal food. While this was clearly improving my health, I was still struggling to truly enjoy my life. Since my late teens, anxiety had become an unwelcome houseguest with a bad habit of convincing me that I must always compensate for my shortcomings. It’s latest browbeating was to the tune of how I would surely fail to thrive in a new country, especially in winter, because the cold and dark would (and did) magnify my loneliness. Why had I ever chosen to move to Germany in November? Motivated to oust this tenant, I needed to do more than expecting regular hikes and organic food to solve all my problems. I started to recount elements of my lifestyle in times where I felt most at peace, much in the way one tries to recall a recipe.
On the ranch, there was always plenty of time for reflection. It was just an inherent part of a lifestyle that depended on the seasons, the weather, and the routines of animals, that there would be idle time. Whether it be the tedious effort of fixing wire fence or sitting for hours on horseback, holding cattle in the freezing rain, one learned even as a child, to wait patiently and use the time to rest or ruminate. And so, I began with observing myself and discovered that not only was I physically doing too much in a day, every day, leaving me exhausted and uninterested in the wholesome lifestyle I was trying hard for, but that a surprisingly large portion of time my mind was elsewhere. While some mind-wanderings are normal and even intentional, the tendency for my thoughts to jump ahead, even in enjoyable moments, was akin fleas on a sugar high. That elsewhere I frequented was unfortunately not a nice land of ponies and wildflowers, but an incessant hamster wheel of determination to maximize my time at every turn. A never-ending-nobody-wins game of killing two birds with one stone, manifesting in the form of multitasking, FOMO, and angst bubbling below the surface.
After scouring self-help books and trying life-coaching, I decided to simply challenge myself to five minutes of doing absolutely nothing per day, which is, by the way, ridiculously more difficult than it sounds. The first days were agonizing but nonetheless, I was surprised when little bits of respite began to emerge as a minute here, five minutes there, like curious woodland creatures timidly hiding in the bushes, having been waiting all along for me to be still so that they could approach. At first, I was clumsy with this “extra” time but with daily practice over months and sticky note reminders all over the place, I could finally “switch off” and genuinely enjoy the rest. Later, my studies would lead me on a deep dive in functional neurology and I would come to realize that I had been stuck in what is known as a sympathetic state.
Something I wish we could all learn as children, like brushing our teeth or (hopefully) eating our vegetables, is a little about how our nervous system works and how to care for it, as this would likely save us all much woe. Without going to boring depths of physiology (and I PROMISE THIS IS GOING SOMEWHERE) the two main operating modes of the central nervous system are sympathetic (“fight or flight/freeze or fawn” reactions) and parasympathetic (“rest and digest” reactions), which control a host of downstream physiological reactions that equip us for the situation at hand and switch on and off as needed throughout the day. Our biology doesn’t know what year it is, present or prehistoric, and can only respond to what the brain interprets as a threat. Therefore, whether a charging saber-tooth tiger, L.A. traffic, or simply disrupting our circadian rhythms with artificial light, our brains interpret it as stress, which is known to have deleterious health consequences worth reading about (Koch, C.E., et al., 2016). Fortunately, research has also shown us that we can inhibit the stress response and create value in life’s challenges through mindfulness (Garland, E.L., et al., 2017)…
Enter slow living.
As my awareness slowly shifted through my attempt to live slow, it began happening automatically that I would seek things to appreciate and let them linger in my mind. I was amazed at how this softened me. I spoke sweeter to myself and went about chores with more care and less hurry. I won’t say that I achieved nirvana and that every monotonous task was done with the zeal and fortitude of a Buddhist monk, but I did feel remarkably better. And isn’t it how we feel that makes our experience? It was as though all the energy that had gone into my frazzled perfectionism was now available to me in the form of desire for beauty, poise, and creativity.
The morning that I found myself, half frozen and barefoot in pajamas, trying to photograph frozen dewdrops on the overgrown hedge in the garden, fully content in this use of time I might add, was when I knew that slow living had taken hold.
“It’s not the years in your life that count, it’s the life in your years.” - Abraham Lincoln… and probably many other wise individuals
One of my favorite slow rituals has been journaling (I’ve written more on this, here) and even for those who don’t enjoy writing, there is something special that can happen when pen is put to actual paper. As fate would have it, around the same time I was tinkering with dew drop photography, the deeply poetic book, 1000 Gifts by Anne Voskamp landed on my desk and showed me how to turn my observations into a gratitude diary. Anne’s book is a beautiful meditation on gratitude as a spiritual practice and brings to full color the day to day lived in experience of taking on such a practice, all while she simultaneously cares for her large family. She is perhaps one of the most shining examples of what slow living and gratitude journaling can do for the mind and spirit.
By Ann’s example,
slow living does NOT mean that one becomes less efficient,
or perform physically slower as they move through the day. But sometimes to truly revel in beauty or satisfaction, physically slowing down is necessary. And it is here that I’m reminded of a comical annual event at Christmas dinner with my husband’s family, here in Germany:
My German mother-in-law serves mousse au chocolat (a German favorite) for dessert, after a light but delicious homemade dinner and, before die Bescherung (opening of gifts from under the Christmas tree). As the story goes, when my husband and his siblings were young, they would wolf down their dinner and dessert, hardly tasting my mother-in-law’s hours of effort in the kitchen in order to get to the presents sooner. Kids can be simultaneously the best and worst examples of slow living. In an amusing and ingenious parental counterstrike, my mother-in-law made it a game that the children should “compete” to see who could eat their mousse au chocolat the slowest. It worked. Now every year, I get the grueling joy of watching three overly competitive adults in their thirties eat chocolate pudding from a crystal goblet, one meticulous fraction of a teaspoon at a time.
I enjoy that my days are punctuated by ritual rather than a specific time schedule. Prayer, time in nature, and cooking (and well, eating too) are the pillars of my slow lifestyle and I dabble in creative hobbies. Someday I’d love to learn to paint with skill beyond my beloved children’s watercolor set, but for now it’s more than enough to spark joy. If possible, I begin the day with a short prayer. Regardless of how much or little sleep I’ve had, I remind myself that my calm presence is among the best gifts I can give my son and that or me to go slow, be conscientious, is to be a better mother. But it is hard at times. Try praying or writing a gratitude journal with a screaming baby in your arms. But talking with God about it all, even in interrupted bites throughout the day, helps me to feel less alone with the responsibility of caring for a whole tiny human. I paint and when I can, resigned to the fact that even five minutes are better than none. Preparing food is a cherished staple of my slow journey. I could spend hours peeling the sweet-sour skins of apples and playing with spices over a simmering pot, while pondering the hands, fields, or lands that the ingredients have known before reaching my kitchen.
Slow living is creating other forms of consciousness in my routines; I’m becoming a slow shopper. Where and how I source my produce and goods makes a difference not only in my experience of gathering them, but in that of those who provided them - human and animal. I love going to the farmers market and make a special outing of it. Each has its own flair and part of the fun is meeting people who have passion for their products. The discovery of locally owned shops and second-hand stores is one reason I love to take alternate routes whenever time allows. I’ve developed a knack for finding wished-for items, second-hand, especially clothing, and it scratches some kind of primal itch to succeed after having hunted. Although it can be slightly more expensive to buy at these quaint locales, I gladly pay the few dollars (or euros in my case) difference, and am grateful for the ability to do so, as my way of supporting the community and ethical commerce.
I still have much to learn about slow living and look forward to how it continues to unfold in my lifestyle. While it has not altered the speed at which I consume pudding or achieve most tasks, it has created subtle discipline and comforting rituals that have helped me get through the toughest of days in a foreign land, the long dark winters, and continues to aid me as I traverse the mountains of how to be a mother and a whole happy person.
Wherever you are along the path of slow living, may it be unexpected and beautiful.
Not ready to upgrade but want to show support?
xx Chesica
References
Garland, E. L., Hanley, A. W., Baker, A. K., & Howard, M. O. (2017). Biobehavioral Mechanisms of Mindfulness as a Treatment for Chronic Stress: An RDoC Perspective. Chronic stress (Thousand Oaks, Calif.), 1, 2470547017711912. https://doi.org/10.1177/2470547017711912
Koch, C. E., Leinweber, B., Drengberg, B. C., Blaum, C., & Oster, H. (2016). Interaction between circadian rhythms and stress. Neurobiology of stress, 6, 57–67. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ynstr.2016.09.001