Hi, Friends,
In honor of the weekend, we’re going to slow down with the Yellow Crayon.
This is going to be a short letter that I hope is the permission slip some of us may need to do less, to do one thing at a time…to just slooooooooowwwwww down and focus on quality over quantity of relationships.
It’s not news that we’re going too fast, in too many directions trying to keep things together as everything around us seems to be spinning out of control. In the midst of timelines and alarms, most of us have ways to stay centered and grounded that are imperfect but helpful. Maybe it’s yoga and meditation; breathing and self-talk; hiking and drawing; prayer and post-it notes; coffee and also coffee. But today I want to highlight the importance of slowing down for being able to connect meaningfully.
Finding what I want to call “Nature Pace” is foundational to being able to connect. Nature Pace is the internal speed at which our whole person can pay attention, respond well and sustain growth. We are already moving through our lives at certain speeds for any number of reasons:
To live up to external expectations of us?
To keep up with the Joneses?
To outrun our cheetah-legged demons?
Because tech hijacked our brains?
Because we don’t have enough support to share the load?
Because FAST is the pace we’ve always known?
Our opportunity is to think about how we shifted into cruise control at those speeds …and whether or not they serve our relationship needs and goals. From that awareness we can then look for openings to experiment with taking back the reigns.
The big idea here is that we have to be moving at a slow enough rate to not be pulled out of ourselves and to not miss the people in our midst.
It makes me wonder how much of loneliness and lack of empathy are related to us missing each other in the rush of daily life. Moving internally at bullet-train speed. If you think about what you can really see, connect to, form a bond with when you’re in a train versus walking the same path, this gives us some idea of how we may be missing each other.
The second, related, big idea is that relationships cannot be microwaved. They grow at the rate of trust. And trust takes time and diverse experiences together. So once we’ve slowed down to connect and form relationships, our expectation of their growth should be realistic. We’re not going to become BFFs in two days. If we don’t know how to move slow and steady together into broader and deeper layers of relationship, we could be nixing incredible humans simply because the relationship isn’t on a rocket ship trajectory.
Last, I just want to pass on the best words I have that center and ground my belonging work and my experience of belonging as a human. I return to them over and over to remind myself of what the work really is, what, at the end of the day, is required of us to create the sense of belonging we need.
Years after graduation, I went back to my mentor’s office and told him that my life was transforming in my local Starbucks. People from every walk of life were sitting down at my table and sharing their life stories, and I was realizing that I could connect and help others do the same just by making space, listening and caring. Dozens of family-like relationships were spilling out of the cafe and becoming the social safety net that so many of us needed in the difficult, transient city.
I sat down in his office and told him the magic that was happening in the cafe and asked him if this was indeed magic or if I was making it up. He smiled, looked up at the ceiling and said that “to be with and for each other as we are, where we are, is everything. But we organize our lives to death to avoid this simple thing because it requires that we slow down and risk being known.” In the cafe we were slowing down. We were risking being known. Day in and day out. And those two things will always be the foundation for meaningful connection.
10 Ideas for Slowing Down
Walk at half speed on your normal walk route.
Talk at half speed to someone you know.
Read at half speed.
Watch a slow movie.
Take twice as long to drink your coffee or tea.
Walk, bike, then drive the same short route and compare what you were able to notice at each speed and what was lost.
Think about the difference between moving your body quickly and hurrying internally.
Take the hands off your clock at home.
Enable students to turn in work whenever they want by end of semester.
Reward nature pace in work environments by focusing on collaborative work and highlighting slow, creative projects.
Take Care,
Cat
P.S. - Remember Slow-Jamming the News?
P.S.S.- Here is a great slow-cooker:) Let’s share recipes!
P.S.S.S.- Here’s a slow jazz playlist. Idk if it’s good, but Cillian Murphy is on the cover.
