Give thanks for a slower-paced life

Years ago, I rushed into a church meeting where an older lady was exclaiming about her busy day – she had two places to go. I looked at her in disbelief and, I’ll admit, some disdain. Two places?! With three young kids, a journalism career and lots of volunteer work, I considered a two-item to-do list a rare treat.

Now, I’ve turned into that lady and I’m giving thanks for the transformation.

It’s Thanksgiving Sunday and the only must-do is to bake a pumpkin loaf to take to our son’s for turkey dinner tomorrow. (Plus a salad and bread, but that’s for tomorrow, and Bill will bake the bread.)

Settling in the small town of Osoyoos, B.C. for the winter, we have the freedom to do as little or as much as we want. And it’s giving me time to reflect upon how I’ve arrived at this slower state of mind.

Looking back over the past 25 years (since our youngest, Rachel, was born), I can see now that I was frazzled and overbooked and stressed much of the time. Which is not to say that I was unhappy. I was happy. And, like many other mothers then, just a little too smug about my busyness. When we moms chatted in the schoolyard, waiting to pick up our kids after school, we compared to-do lists; it was a badge of honour to have the most complicated. Even as I took part in those conversations, I felt unsettled and knew it was wrong. But perhaps I had to go through that to fully appreciate where I am now. If I could live those years over, I would simplify and slow them down.

Reading Carl Honoré’s book In Praise of Slow was a turning point. Published in 2004, the book described the Slow Movement, which was gaining speed around the world as people realized that faster was not always better. “In a world addicted to speed, slowness is a superpower,” Honoré said on his website. “SLOW does not mean doing everything at a snail’s pace. That would be absurd. It means doing everything at the right speed.”

Finding that ‘right speed’ for everything takes time. Gradually becoming empty-nesters helped, but retiring last year gave us an enormous boost. Of course, selling our house and most of our belongings in preparation to travel the world sped things up and involved lists of lists. But once we set off in September 2019, we genuinely began to slow down.

On previous one- or two-week holidays, we scheduled two or three days to see a capital city. But in Portugal, our first stop, we spent a week in Lisbon and still didn’t have enough time to drink in all its experiences (although we made a valiant try with the port and vinho verde). Visiting a sloth sanctuary in Costa Rica underlined just how adorable slow can be! We planned 2.5 months in Argentina, but were there just three weeks before Covid forced us home. I resented that we’d had ‘only’ three weeks, then realized that in the past, we’d have considered three weeks to explore a country to be pure luxury. We were progressing.   

Covid has forced everyone to slow down, or at least to change the activities that normally populate our calendars. Since we can’t go everywhere we want, we spend more time at home. But have we really slowed down, or just turned that busyness inward? The shortages of yeast and some home improvement supplies suggest we’re just as busy doing other things at home. In our case, we converted a cargo van into our Vandalf camper van and then headed for Canada’s west.

Keeping loose travel plans has allowed us to easily work in last-minute Covid-safe visits with former colleagues who are the kinds of friends with whom you can easily pick up after decades apart: Janet, Angela, and Nic!

We’ve learned that slowing down is more a matter of attitude than how much we do or see or accomplish each day. We have more time now to truly appreciate the fine points – the grains of sand – of what we do choose to do, whether it’s feeling the increasing elasticity while kneading bread, watching anenomes expand in a tide pool, or breathing in the Christmas-tree scent of balsam fir along a trail. ‘Doing’ becomes ‘experiencing’ and turns the ‘been there, done that’ checklist mentality of holidays into travel adventures to be savoured and revisited long after we’ve rested our weary feet.

List-making has always measured the complexity of my life. When I’m feeling stressed, I make lists to organize my thoughts and plan the way forward. Now, I consciously avoid making lists. I don’t have a datebook any more. My calendar is scribbled on one sheet of paper that I often forget to consult. I’ve adopted a more laissez-faire attitude that still shocks Bill on occasion.

You can’t mark ‘slow down’ on a to-do list. It’s a process, a gradual change, an evolution. And I’m thankful that I have the first-world privileged luxury to work on it.