An Invitation to Slow Down

The other day I learned some math that really made me think:

The earth is rotating at 1,040 miles per hour. This means that even if you are standing still, you are still moving that fast.

But also the earth itself is orbiting the sun at 66,600 mph. You are also moving that fast.

But also our solar system is moving through the Milky Way at 514,000 mph. Include that number to your pace.

But also the Milky Way itself is traveling through space at about 1.3 million miles per hour. Your speed is really adding up now.

And yet, even with all of this speeding motion, the sun still rises slow enough to cascade through colors slower than our sense of perception. Somehow nature still patiently performs this show for us every morning with an encore in the evening.

A few thoughts on patience and slowing down.

• Recently I read that "younger people sometimes think older people are slower, but often older people just learned to be more deliberate." It's a skill refined with time but it's never too early to start. Add that to the many lessons we can learn from our grandmas.
• Among the many things that can be stolen from each of us, our time might be the least guarded. Imagine if we regularly locked down our brains for contemplation each evening the same way that we lock up our cars and homes.
• From a book called "Stolen Focus" which I recently read and enjoyed:
  • Guy Claxton, a professor of learning sciences at the University of Winchester, has analyzed what happens to a person’s focus if they engage in deliberately slow practices, like yoga, or tai chi, or meditation...and he has shown they improve your ability to pay attention by a significant amount. He said that “we have to shrink the world to fit our cognitive bandwidth.” If you go too fast, you overload your abilities, and they degrade. But when you practice moving at a speed that is compatible with human nature—and you build that into your daily life—you begin to train your attention and focus. “That’s why those disciplines make you smarter. It’s not about humming or wearing orange robes.” Slowness, he explained, nurtures attention, and speed shatters it.

I think about slow moving streams. Steady, persistent, calm, and yet over time they can bend the surroundings to their most preferred state.

Or perfectly put by Lao Tzu:

“Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished.”

Be deliberate. Ponder. Slow down. The universe is already moving us fast enough.