Tag: hurry

How did we get so fast? Is it possible, or even desirable, to slow down?

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erin-cone
Because that’s kind of the world that we live in now, a world stuck in fast-forward. A world obsessed with speed, with doing everything faster, with cramming more and more into less and less time. Every moment of the day feels like a race against the clock. To borrow a phrase from Carrie Fisher, which is in my bio there; I’ll just toss it out again — “These days even instant gratification takes too long.” […]

I think that in the headlong dash of daily life, we often lose sight of the damage that this roadrunner form of living does to us. We’re so marinated in the culture of speed that we almost fail to notice the toll it takes on every aspect of our lives — on our health, our diet, our work, our relationships, the environment and our community. And sometimes it takes a wake-up call, doesn’t it, to alert us to the fact that we’re hurrying through our lives, instead of actually living them; that we’re living the fast life, instead of the good life. And I think for many people, that wake-up call takes the form of an illness. You know, a burnout, or eventually the body says, “I can’t take it anymore,” and throws in the towel. […]

And I had two questions in my head.

The first was, how did we get so fast?

And the second is, is it possible, or even desirable, to slow down?

~ Carl Honore, In Praise of Slowness

Art: Erin Cone with “Traverse” from the exhibition “Ineffable” (via Mennyfox55)

Saturday Morning

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toes-feet-hands-fingers-black-and-white

A balanced life has a rhythym. But we live in a time, and in a culture, that encourages everyone to just move faster. I’m learning that if I don’t take the time to tune in to my own more deliberate pace, I end up moving to someone else’s, the speed of events around me setting a tempo that leaves me feeling scattered and out of touch with myself. I know now that I can’t write fast; that words, my own thoughts and ideas, come to the surface slowly and in silence. A close relationship with myself requires slowness. . .

A thoughtful life is not rushed.

Notes:

 

Ma

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train-sit-rest-pause

I told Miyazaki I love the “gratuitous motion” in his films; instead of every movement being dictated by the story, sometimes people will just sit for a moment, or they will sigh, or look in a running stream, or do something extra, not to advance the story but only to give the sense of time and place and who they are.

“We have a word for that in Japanese,” he said. “It’s called ma. Emptiness. It’s there intentionally.”

Is that like the “pillow words” that separate phrases in Japanese poetry?

“I don’t think it’s like the pillow word.” He clapped his hands three or four times. “The time in between my clapping is ma. If you just have non-stop action with no breathing space at all, it’s just busyness, But if you take a moment, then the tension building in the film can grow into a wider dimension. If you just have constant tension at 80 degrees all the time you just get numb.”

~ Roger Ebert, from “Hayao Miyazaki Interview,” RogerEbert.com (September 12, 2002)

Credits: Quote – Improve is Easy. Photo by Bruno via Mennyfox55.

It’s been a long day

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fumerolle_Johanne-cullen-woman-tired

I see and inhabit beauty in a blink.
But it doesn’t change me within.
It doesn’t release the iron jaws of worry,
the buzzing hurry,
the dull certainty that I am, we are,
the world is spiraling down.
Where are you in this?
How can I access the energy
that used to hold me aloft?

~ Dani Kopoulos

Notes:

Where am I heading?

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photography,portrait,

It’s incredible how one runs about frantically at times like a rat in a maze, not really knowing right from wrong (and often really not caring), victim of one’s own passions and instincts rather than master of one’s own soul. I suppose the proper thing to do is just to stop every now and then and say, Where am I heading? Actually, though I’m still much like the psychologist’s rat, I find myself asking myself that question almost too often. I suppose the very fact that I realize my indulgence in too much introspection is another sign (I hope) of maturity. Too much brooding is unhealthy and, although I still have my slumps, I’ve begun to realize that one of the great secrets is striking a balance between thought and action… Living, acting, thinking; not just vegetating neurotically, on one hand, or blundering about, on the other hand, like so many people do, like trapped flies. It’s a hard balance to strike, but I think it can be done, and that in this exciting-sorrowful age of ours it can make great literature.

~ William Styron, 1967 Pulitzer Prize winner, in a letter to his Father in 1949

Quote Source: Brainpickings. Photo: ei-ka-dan