Slowing Down
This short article was posted amidst the coronavirus outbreak, one week after the British government enforced the general public to go into isolation.
In today’s super-connected and fast-paced world, slowing down can seem like a thing of the past, of times gone by.
As a freelancer and small business owner, I’ll put my hands up and say this can be tough. Today, we creatives and small business owners are almost hardwired to live ever-faster, more productive lives if we are to ‘succeed’; a greater number of ideas, ever-more content shared through social at an exponential rate that is governed by 'the algorithm'.
But what if we were to just hit pause?
The pandemic has opened my eyes to just how relentless my pace of life had become. When the world came to a standstill, I had the chance to snap out of my daily habits and reevaluate what truly matters: family, friends, and physical and mental nourishment in the form of breathing in nature in my own back yard. This is where I turned my hand to gardening.
Once we slow down things start to change. The never-ending list of to-do’s gradually becomes less urgent. The background noise in the brain is turned down, the birdsong is turned up.
As children, my brothers and I would often help my parents with chores around the garden — weeding flower beds and managing the woodland. But it wasn’t until the pandemic that I grew vegetables for the first time.
Weeding, maintaining, watering and watching the veg grow is a therapeutic, mindful process.
In today’s super-connected and fast-paced world, slowing down can seem like a thing of the past, of times gone by. The act of slipping on my wellies, picking up a fork and getting out into the garden helps me slow down and appreciate nature on a different scale and at a different pace.
To me, slowing down means two things:
1. Living more in the present moment. Being mindful of the task at hand. The simple act of planting and nurturing seeds almost forces one to slow down. There is something incredibly mindful about the whole process. And once we slow down things start to change. The never-ending list of to-do’s gradually becomes less urgent. The background noise in the brain is turned down, the birdsong is turned up.
2. Allocating my time differently. Perhaps ‘allocating’ is the wrong turn of phrase - the word itself suggests that our precious time needs to fit into some kind of schedule. Replacing 'productive' creative output time with regenerative input. As we move through this lockdown and beyond, I'm going to make every effort to find a better balance, where I can carve out time to pot plants and weed horsetails between working on digital illustrations, emails and all of the other things required to run a small creative freelance business.
"Our appointment with life is in the present moment. The place of our appointment is right here, in this very place."
It seems like something fundamentally shifted during the start of this pandemic. The way we collectively value our time, now that the world has hit pause. And growing veg has been a massive part of this as people have been forced to stay at home. The world over, people are joining what can only be described as a home growers revolution, from windowsill tomato champions to raised bed warriors. A vegetable garden (or even a tomato pot on a windowsill) can become a pathway to new modes of living. We can collectively think more deeply about our relationship with the land, our food, and ourselves.
So if you haven't already, I invite you to pick up a pack of seeds and get growing. It might be your time to join the rush in slowing down.