There are many reasons to slow down, take things easier, and I hardly need to list them here. The oft-used, somewhat tired old cliche of my post's title is just one way of saying it, taking time to really notice your surroundings instead of rushing everywhere because there is so much to cram into every day, so many obligations.
Lately this has been bothering me more than usual. I'm often alarmed at how time seems to just slip away from me. I feel resentful that the lion's share of my energy goes towards working, since in this day and age of ours, we have to, need to work in order to buy food, pay for shelter. What happened to those days when working consisted of raising your own food and building and maintaining your own shelter? Is this even possible anymore? Nowadays you have to have some kind of income because the government demands taxes on the ownership of land. And now we're all dependant on supermarkets for food. Imagine if all the supermarkets suddenly disappeared. I'm guessing most of us would just starve.
I've heard of these wonderful, self-sufficient lives of people who live off the land and make enough money to pay property taxes by selling the hydro they produce from sun or wind or whatever back to the power grid. It's sadly humourous that I don't even know where to start heading towards such a lifestyle because I'm too tired from working at my job! It's just a theme that keeps presenting itself lately.
Finding little peaceful moments, a walk perhaps in the midst of one's work day, is a small way to survive this racket we seem to have somehow gotten into. Recently I was reading something interesting about walking, and of how these days our perceptions of our surroundings have changed because we're always flying along in a car and missing so much of what the land has to offer. There's a theory that, if we had to stay in our surroundings a bit longer than we do when driving, we would be less likely to litter. It's a case of out of sight, out of mind, and when someone throws litter out of their car window it's quickly out of sight and there's an end to it, for them. If we were more engaged in the landscape than we can possibly be while driving, we might feel closer to it, care more for it.
"Wherever we walk, we enter the story of the land, becoming part of it. But only one who travels slowly can can perceive that story and learn from it." - Caitlin Matthews
What do you do to achieve some balance and perspective in your life? Keeping in mind that most of us have to work full-time, and often run a household and juggle many obligations?
