What is Slow Living? (Plus Five Things It's Not)
Slow Living might be trending - but depictions on social media often miss the point completely.
Welcome to Slow Folk - a community for wanderers and wonderers, trail-blazers, rabble-rousers and bridge-burners, dawdlers, creatives, late-bloomers, taboo-breakers and renegades, thirsty for a slower life in a world obsessed with speed.
These are my notes and reflections from over a decade of life in the Slow Lane. If you’re ready to push back against busy to build a life of purpose and presence-over-perfection - please join me.
Welcome to the unbusy revolution.
What is Slow Living, Voluntary Simplicity, Downshifting, Simple Living??
What is Slow Living all about? Close your eyes. What do you picture when you hear those phrases? Pastoral country roads? Tiny houses? Empty rooms with only the bare essentials? Austerity? A return to simpler times? Or a return to a life of unnecessary hard work?
The Roots of the Slow Movement
The Slow Movement began during the 1980's in Italy with Slow Food.
McDonald's put a restaurant at the Spanish Steps in Rome and the Italians weren't having any of that shit. They showed up to protest in the square armed with bowls of pasta and proudly proclaimed -
We Want Slow Food, Not Fast Food!
Carlo Petrini is author of Slow Food Nation and is considered the father of the Slow Food Movement. He saw the negative effects of industrialized fast food systems on food, health, social justice and culture. Slow Food was his cure for this modern illness.
Carl Honore, who wrote In Praise of Slow, which many consider the manifesto of the Slow Movement, explained it this way:
"It is a cultural revolution against the notion that faster is always better. The Slow philosophy is not about doing everything at a snail's pace. It's about seeking to do everything at the right speed. Savouring the hours and minutes rather than just counting them. Doing everything as well as possible, instead of as fast as possible. It’s about quality over quantity in everything from work to food to parenting."
Since then, we have applied Slow Values to everything from work to fashion to technology.
Why is Slow Living so attractive?
In recent years Slow + Simple living has seen a huge bump in popularity. It makes sense, right? We're all running round like chickens without heads, exhausted and overwhelmed and feeling like something's missing.
Meanwhile, while we try to fill that hole, we rack up debt and wreak havoc on our environment.
We know we can't go on this way. A simple, slow life seems like a lovely change of pace from the frantic lives most of us are living, doesn't it? One with less worry, less stress, less debt, less stuff. We're running out of credit, and the earth is running out of time.
Intuitively it makes sense that choosing to live a Slower Life could help.
So What IS the Slow Life All About?
1) SLOW LIVING REJECTS THE MODERN BELIEF THAT FASTER IS ALWAYS BETTER
Sometimes it's fun to go fast. Sometimes it's necessary. And that is TOTALLY OK.
Slow Living doesn't mean you have to practice intentionally slow micro-movements while making your coffee. (Yes, apparently that's a thing. And no, I don't have time for that, either.)
What Slow Living is, is a deep belief that faster isn't ALWAYS better.
Slow Living is about living at the PROPER pace. It's the difference between cramming down a burger and fries in the car between appointments and sitting down to dinner with your family.
Efficiency has its place, but far too often efficiency and speed rob our lives of purpose and joy. Slow living focuses instead on effectiveness. On doing things well and at the proper pace.
Choosing to live an intentionally Slow Life gives us a chance to evaluate what is important, make decisions consciously instead of out of habit, and actually experience the moment we find ourselves in.
2) SLOW LIVING VALUES QUALITY OVER QUANTITY
More, bigger, faster is a pretty common modern mantra.
Trouble is, our undisciplined pursuit of More is making us unhappy, unhealthy and indebted. It's also not been so hot for Mother Earth.
Instead, Slow Living celebrates LESS but BETTER. Whether it's the Slow Meat Movement that advocates eating less meat of better quality or Slow Fashion that emphasizes owning less pieces that are made to last, the Slow Movement always puts quality before quantity.
3) A SLOW LIFESTYLE MAKES TIME AND SPACE FOR WHAT MATTERS
Intentionally Slow Living eliminates the non-essential in order to make room for what really matters. Rather than viewing Slow Living as something to add to your to-do list, think of Slow Living as a NOT to-do list.
When I lost my Mum to cancer at only 64, my passion for the Slow and Simple Life increased tenfold. I learned the hard way through that terrible time that most of the shit we think is important, isn't. PERIOD.
When my Mum died, I used my grief as fuel to simplify my life even further. I finally got my house completely in order, took garbage after garbage bag of STUFF to donation, slashed my "should-do" list and tossed a laundry list of toxic beliefs.
I didn't feel a drop of guilt. Because I knew, more clearly than ever, what actually mattered.
Getting rid of everything that didn't matter freed up time, energy and focus for the very few things that do; my kids, my husband, service to my community and my work.
4) SLOW LIVING IS ABOUT BEING INTENTIONAL WITH OUR ATTENTION
Your attention is your most valuable resource. Why else do you think Facebook and all the rest are willing to pay such big bucks to get it and keep it?
Where we focus our attention, so goes our life.
As someone who suffered from clinical depression and anxiety, learning to manage my attention completely changed my life.
Whether it is practicing gratitude, being present in the moment, or learning to calm my heart rate, changing what I pay attention to was transformational. I dug myself out from major postpartum depression and kicked anxiety to the curb.
Slow Living teaches us to be fiercely, unapologetically protective of our attention.
For me, that's meant quitting Facebook, using automation to post on social media for my business and saying NO. A lot.
Thoughts are magical things. The ones we feed are the ones that grow. But we have to choose. Most of us who are living a fast, frenetic life aren't choosing. Someone else (who is probably profiting from it) is choosing for us.
Slowing down allows us the time and focus to be intentional about how we spend out attention, our most valuable resource.
5) SLOW LIVING IS ABOUT EMBRACING IMPERFECTION
Some of the most "perfect" moments of my life have been the ones that weren't planned for, the ones that aren't worth Instagramming. They're messy and imperfect and sometimes full of pain.
I certainly didn't plan on my Mum dying of cancer. (Pretty sure that one wasn't on her TO-DO list either.) But it happened. And you know what, in all that pain, because I was present, because I had the courage to experience the grief, I was given some of the most valuable moments of my life.
For me, Slow Living has been about learning to lean into the pain as well as the joy.
Farming is full of heartbreak. It can be gut-wrenchingly awful. But all the pain, that's good too. If I refused to be open to experience the fullness of my grief, I'd also miss out on the fullness of joy. You can't turn off one without turning off the other.
The Slow Life allows us the time and space for both.
Here's the thing. SLOW LIVING ISN'T ABOUT PERFECTION. And there is no ONE way to do it.
Slow Living isn't about going at a going at a snail's pace, despite the fact that Slow Food's logo is . . . wait for it . . . a snail.
Slow Living is about Le Tempo Giusto. The PROPER pace. YOU get to choose that pace. Not me or some perfectly styled woman on Instagram.
No one else gets to decide if your life is Slow enough.
There are no rules.
You can't do it wrong.
5 Things Slow Living is NOT :
1) A COMPETITION
Stop comparing your Slow Lifestyle to anyone else's.
Comparison truly is the thief of joy. So just stop. Right now.
2) A SET OF STRICT RULES TO FOLLOW
Slow Living is NOT about following some strict (often completely arbitrary) set of rules. We see this all over the place, all the time, especially on social media.
Whether it's zero-wasters shaming others in their community for eating somewhere or something they “shouldn't”, or vegans gatekeeping and passing judgement on who's vegan enough to be part of the club . . . None of it is in the spirit of the movement and none of it is helpful.
Listen, it's handy to have guidelines when you're first starting any major lifestyle change BUT the moment those "guidelines" start becoming angry little dictators in your life, it's time to chuck 'em.
Living a Slow Lifestyle is supposed to make your life MORE enjoyable, not less. If someone else's made-up-rules don't serve you or are stressing you out, show 'em the door.
3) ABOUT PERFECTION
Especially as women, we have a habit of taking lifestyle movements that are meant to make our lives better and turning them from a beautiful journey of self-exploration into a knock-down, drag-out demolition derby in pursuit of perfection.
None of us get where we're going, and we all end up in the dirt covered in mud.
Slow Living is about enjoying and savouring your journey, whatever that looks like for you.
Learning to embrace the ordinary, imperfect moments of my life has been one of the greatest gifts Slow Living has given me.
4) A HOME DECOR MOVEMENT
Gads. I don't know why we do it, but boy do we ladies know how to lay the pressure on thick!
Good grief. Slow and Simple Living isn't about having a perfectly styled home with all the right thrift store finds, exotic houseplants and the perfect muted colour scheme.
Neither you nor your home have to look a certain way to live a slower, simpler life.
5) ONLY FOR PEOPLE WHO HAVE TIME TO SLOW DOWN
Show me a person who feels like they have extra time and I'll show you someone who's probably already done a lot of hard work to intentionally slow down.
Look. You can't wait till you're ready. If you keep saying "when x happens, I'll have more time, then I'll try Slow Living". (Lemme tell you a secret . . . Your life isn't going to Slow Down on it's own. You have to MAKE IT SLOW DOWN.)
My life in on the farm looks from the outside like the cliche simple life; a tiny old farmhouse, chickens in the fields, a big garden, little kids and farm animals . . .
But let me tell you, farming as a general rule is NOT the slowest life out there. The work never stops. No matter the weather or how you're feeling or what else is on your to-do list, the chickens will still lay eggs, piglets and lambs will be born, the weather will do what it will.
I am a full-time Mama, farmer, business owner and wife. My life is Slow because I made an effort to make it that way.
If you let go of perfection, stop comparing your Slow Life to anyone else's and give yourself lots of grace, you'll find the true spirit of Slow and Simple Living.
You deserve a beautiful, abundant, joyful life.
Now go and get it!
Stacey Langford is a writer, renegade farmer and slow business mentor living and working in Canada’s Fraser Valley. In 2010 Stacey ditched her cubicle in the city to turn her attention homeward, farm and help others craft a simple life, from scratch.
5 Things Slow Living is Not- I’m thinking there’s some overlap with Homeschooling too (maybe not #5)