FAST AND FURIOUS vs SLOW AND CURIOUS

Tempo di lettura: 13 minuti

“There is a secret bond between slowness and memory, between speed and forgetting.

A man is walking down the street. At a certain moment, he tries to recall something, but the recollection escapes him. Automatically, he slows down.

Meanwhile, a person who wants to forget a disagreeable incident he has just lived through starts unconsciously to speed up his pace, as if he were trying to distance himself from a thing still too close to him in time.

In existential mathematics that experience takes the form of two basic equations: The degree of slowness is directly proportional to the intensity of memory; the degree of speed is directly proportional to the intensity of forgetting.”
– Milan Kundera, Slowless –

Rarely in my life have I walked out of a bookstore empty-handed, though every time I walk in I remind myself:

1. I have a house full of books
2. I bought a book reader to avoid accumulating more books
3. I will never be able to read all the books I own.

But it’s stronger than me! However, I find this to be one of the healthiest weaknesses in the world: in fact, I’m almost convinced that those who can’t find the time to go into a bookstore or consider a book a mere source of dust, are more or less lucidly complicit in the involution of society, especially in cases where they choose to have children, because they will not know how to instill curiosity, love of slowness and knowledge. Reading means slowing down, taking a break, stepping out of the world we are in to explore others, enriching our vocabulary and marveling. And from that wonder can only come a different awareness, of us, of the life we live and how we live it. A wonder that stimulates other wonder, bringing us off the unstoppable carousel that spins so frantically that we have lost the ability to value other lives than our own, every action that is not productive, every feeling that does not respond to rules.

“What is more important in life, if not work?” I hear asked and asked again and again. “In my opinion, the ability to appreciate life and make the world we live in better through our behaviors, love of knowledge, happiness. Work is the means, not the end, even when it is the work we love”: this is the answer I would give if I did not know that the question is not a real question, those who ask it do not want to have my opinion, but only to affirm their choice to live only according to work, which they consider the only measure of the value of people. Therefore, the answers that I don’t give out loud, become food for thought and observation for me, a stimulus to try to understand the human soul and the way each of us relates to our inner world and brings it out about others.

If we put work at the center of everything as the only reason for living and as a manifestation of its value to the world, if we judge those around us based on the work they do, the hours they devote to their work, coming to decree what is work and what is not based on these parameters, without considering anything else, then we can predict where our lives end: work can be lost, a business can fail, an investment can turn out to be a source of loss of all our material resources and…blackout: we forgot to predict a lifesaver by cultivating positive emotions, to nurture psychophysical well-being beyond the economic one, to practice self-care.

That’s where, if we have always considered work as the end and only value of life, we will end up crushed under the weight of our skyscraper of ephemeral certainties, and we will continue to run with shortness of breath towards…I don’t know where, maybe we will be stuck wondering until the end of our days.
It’s worth a try before it’s too late: try to slow down, see the world at a different speed and ask yourself what work, life, health would be like if no one had invested in knowledge, dissemination, culture, in the perspective of otherness, if everyone had run his individual race, without worrying about the whole of humanity after him, if everyone had thought that his work was the only indisputable in the world, and his competence unparalleled. It’s not about necessarily taking another point of view, it’s about stopping, and trying to question our certainties, with humility and without fearing the judgment we often reserve for those around us.

Sometimes, I feel the desire to ask those who dart past me with their load of things to do as no one else would, “but where are you running to? Can’t you see that you are devouring life?” At the end of the race, there won’t be another one.

LIVING TO WORK

No, I am not unaware that more and more often we have to work more than we can bear, that the responsibilities of some jobs cannot be bargained away, and I certainly reject with all my might the concept of motivation that should make people accept any working condition because on this concept I have seen the worst forms of exploitation and manipulation built, which reach dangerous power dynamics. To lose out is our health, our well-being, our very lives. To induce us to give up that well-being which is our life’s engine, the strategies are rather petty, poor in content, but alas they take hold in our lives full of uncertainties, in a world in a perpetual race, which does not allow us to take a break. So, often after years of study, work, training, waiting to be able to put our money and time investments to good use, we are faced with human misery in the form of:

• “If you leave, there’s a crowd outside”: in fact, on leaving work, we often find ourselves dodging the crowd of zombies who pile up against the door to be able to come in and take the place of those whose salaries do not even reach half the month.
• “For now, I’ll make you work for seventeen hours a day for 600 euros without vacation or illness, then if you do well I’ll keep you”: this is the new “trial month”, which would normally be paid as per the contract in which it is provided, and if the trial does not go well, it ends there. But the “maybe I’ll keep you while I treat you like a slave and even kiss my ass because I’ll make you work” seems to be particularly trendy among heroic employers, who are reduced to living on the breadline to give a few pennies to the community they pitifully make work. Thank you, may God have you in Glory, soon.
• “I can see that you work for the money, don’t you think it’s hard to guarantee everyone a salary? It would be better if we closed down?”: it seems that working for money has become much more serious than doing an armed robbery in a Bank. In the etiquette of the new occupational era, people go to work because it is a privilege to be able to work and to demand a salary is lame and selfish. Especially if you work in that third sector serving the community, where there is no boundary between work and volunteer work, and woe betide you for questioning the system! Have you ever tried to ask to be able to pay taxes, mortgages, bills, medications, clothes, shoes, and travel in motivation? It’s unbelievable, you don’t accept payments in this form…where are we going to get by dint of sticking to the concept of work for pay!
• “Look at that: at the end of the shift they hurry up and leave…they don’t work ten minutes more…”: it is not clear to me why at the end of a work shift they should not leave work. This is a very Italian characteristic, from a purely managerial mentality: the best are those who do not look at the clock, who work late, who leave work just to go to sleep, as if they had to hold up the whole world and even the company, on one leg. And if they find themselves in the period of “maybe I keep you”, they are doomed, because one hint of leaving on time could jeopardize their future, no matter how many right skills they have.
• “I’ve been looking for staff for a thousand months, I can’t find anyone who wants to work in my bar/restaurant/hotel/any business, especially among young people”: have you tried not paying them 4 euros an hour?
• “Our companies are in crisis because the high professionals are all going to work abroad”: as above. Hardly anyone would leave their country on equal terms, ergo.

I know what it’s like to work without being able to afford to check the clock to get off at a specific time, how frustrating it is to have to ask for a paycheck at the end of the month, how unpleasant it is to be there to work for the money and not for the glory, and I also know how it feels when one fine day you find yourself dealing with a job that is no longer there. I am not unaware of the system we live in.

That’s why we need to work on the space we give to this in our minds, in our daily lives, even when we’re not at work.

SLOWING DOWN

 …because by slowing down we can make room for knowledge, build our critical thinking, question a system that is stealing our time, a time to be in the world, a time to build supportive and non-competitive relationships 24/7.

The daily enjoyment of life is a dimension that requires an initial effort of questioning, but then it becomes the healthiest exercise of being in the world without running anywhere, going through life as in a large and silent library: observing, discovering, empathizing, dwelling on our emotions, welcoming our discomforts and caring for our soul. This is what then helps us drive our medium, which is work: it’s what will also put our right to recognition in every respect back at the center of everything. This new lens helps us to see details that we previously ignored, each one in its own context. So eating will no longer be “throwing down something”, sleeping will become regenerating, walking will be discovering, cooking and exercising will be medicine taken regularly, coffee breaks will be an opportunity to look into the eyes of the person we are talking to, reading a book will be a moment to go elsewhere, into the world of the person who wrote it, listening to the sound of silence.

Life has put me to the test to come to this conclusion, so I certainly can’t claim that it’s a trifle: however, I believe more than anything else in sharing and transmitting experiences as a source of growth and evolution, in a dialogical dimension in which we all support each other and take care of each other. That is nothing but the feminist perspective with which I live the process of growth, despite everything and despite all*.
It is not from the top of my pedestal that I try to move the love for life but from the depths of the personal experience that brought me to this space of healthy and constructive slowness, that I will continue to build together, and thanks to you.

Every now and then I try to share my journey, because it is precisely by sharing our experiences that we can support someone, not by setting ourselves up as experts* of other people’s lives, their pain, their trauma.

Let’s talk WITH people, rather than ABOUT people

Because if it’s about people for whom we feel esteem and affection, it will be important for them to know that, and a good reason to believe in themselves even in the most difficult moments; if it’s about people with whom we are in conflict, it will be a good exercise in life, because talking about people can turn a conflict into something much more harmful – an example of this is mobbing, both in the workplace and in everyday life, but we’ll talk about that here – while talking with people we choose to try to solve that conflict, and leave space for confrontation.

Then there is a third way: if we don’t feel like talking to people, we have the option not to, they will certainly get less harm out of it than our talking about them with the ambition of solving other people’s lives by practicing our solutions. Trying is believing.

LET’S REDISCOVER SIMPLE CURIOSITY

Just like when we were children: the world around us stimulated the desire to know more, we could observe what went unnoticed by adult eyes, we knew how to live in the moment and imagine what we didn’t have at hand, invent worlds in which to have adventures and overcome fears. We weren’t interested in judging how other people lived their lives, how they spent their time, and whether or not they had jobs. We weren’t interested in judging, we were interested in knowing, to know all the colors of the world we lived in, nuances included. The questions we asked had the pure and simple purpose of satisfying our curiosity, and not sticking a label on someone. Then, as we grow up, it happens that we observe and listen to a world around us that gives answers before asking questions, that assigns value to people based on generic information.

As you enter a bookstore, I recommend that you buy a copy of “The Little Prince” by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, to remember that “all the greats have been small, but few of them remember”, and that it is not unseemly to go back to meet our childhood and our curiosity, the care we had for what we now consider futile.

“SURELY, S/HE’S A TIME WASTER!”

This is what we often hear when, for example, we find ourselves talking about someone who has a hobby, who takes particular care of their home, who spends time reading or doing anything else out of reach of those who say something that, in terms of superficiality, is second only to judging a person by how they dress. I, on the other hand, believe that the people who choose to stop and then start again at reduced speed do so not because they have time to waste, but because they don’t want to waste time. For my second part of life, I choose not to waste time and I happen to see and hear how little life there is in those who believe I have time to waste, simply because I don’t need to show anyone how good I am at running. Sitting at a desk writing is not considered a dignified occupation: if they only knew that sometimes I color, I could be nominated idler of the year!

Time is never lost when we come back into ourselves, listen to each other, welcome each other, try to find out how we are changing, clean up the path we are on and make it comfortable and inspiring, with nice rest stops so we can regenerate.

Choosing not to waste time is also what allows us to take care of our loved ones, to cultivate sensitivity. During the celebration of the lay funeral of a person who had committed suicide after going through the hell of unemployment and depression, a dear friend said a few words that I have been repeating since that day every time I find myself in front of those who run too fast and have no time to waste “sensitive people must stay close”. Yes, because only by being close can we understand what a great gift the life we are living is, and only by being close we can support each other.

 

“We run during the daytime and we run during our sleep. We do not know how to stop. Our practice is first of all to stop, then to relax, to calm down and to concentrate. When we can do this, then we are in the here and now. Then we become solid. And when we are solid, we can look around. We can look deeply into the present moment, we can look deeply into our true nature, and we can discover the ultimate dimension.”

-Thich Nhat Hanh, No Death, No Fear-