[Inspiration] The Beauty of Slowness

"Everybody at the speed of light tends to become nobody" Marshall McLuhan

Just recently, a blogger friend, Max from Maxmayo shared an article with us, interestingly, after reading the interview via kinfolk online, the idea of slowness starts to dawn on us and we begin to ponder over the fact that have we led our lives in a hurried manner (like most of us today) or have we tried to even attempt to slow down a little? 

The   s   l  o  w    movement promotes slowness as a way of being: intuitive, centered, receptive, careful, quality over quantity as opposed to aggresiveness, stressed, impatient, careless, quantity over quality. We want to design our time perfectly, feel the intensity of every minute. The slow movement is not about replacing speed with slowness. It is concerned with the work-life balance. (according to Ilse Crawford in one of our favourite Interior books entitled Home Is Where The Heart Is?). 

Kinfolk basically interviewed Carl Honore, on how people can work slowly in a fast pace world of today and yet still achieve the quality of life we intend to have. Carl Honore is one of the world's most respected advocates of the slow movement, which focuses on the way we live, work, eat and communicate. Something struck us in the interview. He says communicating more does not always mean communicating better. Guess we are so absorbed in our new technologies that sometimes we think we may be communicating more, but in real fact, we aren't, are we? Do you feel the same?

Carl then offers some of these simple steps to achieve a slower life and in return, we shall benefit from it in the long run - physically, psychologically, emotionally and all. He suggests to:

Do less | Buy less | Consume less | Drive less

Unplug more | Walk more | Sleep more | Stop multi-tasking

Are we guilty of at least one of the above? or more, perhaps? Note to self, we think we need to learn how not to multi-task from now on. If we don't get at least one thing done in a day, we do feel very unproductive as we are so used to "getting things done", always focusing on doing, instead of sometimes, just being. Perhaps it is a delicate state of mind that we need to learn to cultivate, hence achieving that work-life balance that they are talking about. 

In our production work, we do feel we have been quite "laid back" and "took it easy" for the past few years. In fact, too "relaxed" that at times it could be a challenge to pay the bills. It is not that we didn't try hard enough, but perhaps it wasn't the right method? Being an entrepreneur can be mind boggling. Life can be stressful that way, running your own business. But come to think of it on another level, we did enjoy seeing the boys grow, being able to spend more time with them. Guess it is about finding that balance after all! Blogging is a whole different case. We do feel at times pressured into delivering blog posts, but overall, we still enjoy the experience tremendously. The passion is still strong. Yay!

Do check out the full interview of kinfolk with Carl Honore here. There are more interesting points about how a company can adopt that slow culture, and which country does it best in terms of striking a balance with their way of life - living slowly. All visuals via pinterest (except the two on Ilse Crawford's book).

Perhaps slow is a new approach to appreciate life better. As what Carl says, "If you don't have the time to be slow, then you aren't living properly". We hope you will find a little time to slow down yourself and enjoy the life you are meant to live, whole heartedly, without any worries or stress. Till then, stay luminous and happy always, lovelies *_^

With love, 

Jeann