Say it three times, slowly: Half-Fast. Half-Fast. Half-Fast.
That last time, you paused for the dash, didn’t you? Half – Fast.
Have you ever felt pressured to do something too quickly – make a move, a choice, maybe a momentous decision – too quickly, and Wham! You realize we weren’t meant to live this fast. It’s a nightmare.
We need the pauses. We need a leisurely sunset-timescape, with at least three full Mississippis for a long day’s story to unfold. Even though our super-fast world wants us to skip the process of slowly becoming, of simply being present in this one delectable moment, pausing is essential for comprehension, focus, and integration. Witness the sunset. Nature holds our attention and restores our ability to be fully present.
What’s the rationale for keeping up with our accelerated posthuman context, guided by microprocessors able to perform cycles in excess of 6 GHz? Expediency and domination, of course. We are programmed in a competitive hierarchy to succeed, to come out on top, win at all cost, cross the finish line first. In a posthuman world where domination and expediency are gods, imitating a super-fast microprocessor is the way our techno-saturated “genius” makes us comply with the paradigm. How fast are we talking, anyway? A clock speed of 6.2 GHz means the processor can perform 6.2 billion cycles per second, an absurd speed to our human brain, which can process about 10 bits/second, although many neuro-scientists would say we’re comparing apples to oranges.
Each moment, our bodily senses can take in about 10 trillion bits of information, but our brains filter them so we process only about 10 bits/second. Why?
Added to this conundrum: why does the human brain process one thought at a time rather than many parallel thoughts simultaneously, the way our sensory systems do? Caltech researchers submit that perhaps our earliest progenitors with a nervous system used their brains primarily for navigation, fleeing predators or seeking food. If human brains evolved to follow one simple path at a time – for example, toward food, or away from predators – it stands to reason that we evolved to be “one path at a time” descendants. We evolved to be present to one opening at a time.
Have you ever tried to be in conversation with someone who’s also paying attention to something/someone else, who jumps every time the cell phone pings? If you’ve ever been fortunate to be in the presence of someone who gives you their full attention, who resists distraction, who listens to every word without needing to respond, who reads each nuance of your body language, facial expressions, and pauses, you know what it means to experience real presence. If that person is special to you, their greatest gift is their full, undivided, real presence. If you are special to someone, your greatest gift is being fully present to them in the moment. It requires full attention. It’s truly difficult to do that unless we S-L-O-W D-O-W-N. Pay attention with our full sensorium. Immerse ourselves in the present moment. Like Nature teaches us.
We are not meant to live so fast. We are meant to go slowly, follow one path at a time. We do better, sustain ourselves and thrive more fully, feel nourished and relaxed when we move more at Nature’s pace – slowly, with intention, connection, and grace. Our bodies intuit this need to go slowly. Anxiety, stress cortisol build-up, depression, exhaustion, illness, and dis-ease are what occur when we ignore our bodily wisdom to go slowly. We break.
We are designed for slowness, to savor the intimacy of going deeper, connecting with each other and the natural world at a deep level, listening, and being fully present. We flourish with the pauses, the dashes, and the commas. Our breathing and heart rate slow, and our vital organs, muscular-skeletal, and nervous systems respond positively to deeper breath. We thrive when we slow to our internal pace, our Nature-calibrated interior rhythm. We remember how to slow-dance.
That slow dance is key to the art of living well, living fully. That dance is where we are held in our depths, where we are known by subtlety and nuance. That slow dance is where we belong as humans among the wider “We” of Life. It is how we can return, day after day, to the still, center point where equanimity and inner calm give us confidence and poise because we are paying attention, noticing what matters, and processing slowly. It’s where we belong, this timeless embrace when everything slows to coalesce beneath the surface, and wisdom rises from the depths of stillness.
So, if we’re ready to learn the art of slowness, Nature is a great dance partner. Nature teaches us. Listen to the birdsong. They are the guardians of the forest. Notice the pollinators. They make everything bright and beautiful. Linger in the sunset. Light and shadow meld into one. Feel the soft caress of a misty morning. It gathers into hopeful teardrops to start the new day. Smell the pine and jasmine and lavender and mint. Unmistakable fragrances of desires and dreams. Taste the garden’s ripe sweetness, its story spilling sunlight into energy into food into life. Savor the changing seasons. We are leaves, flowers, oceans, and trees. Create poetry, music, and art. Learn the primordial Love language. And dance!
