Take Time to Smell the Roses

The Slow movement offers an alternative tailor-made for retirement.

Photo by Linus Nylund on Unsplash

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You can now read The EndGame newsletter and listen to our podcasts in the new Substack app for iPhone. (Substack is the platform I use to publish The EndGame. It’s also home to many other interesting newsletters you might love, including Susie Kaufman’s seventysomething.) The app keeps everything in one place so you don’t have to toggle between email and web browser. It’s like a separate inbox for The EndGame and other Substack newsletters. You can download it here. If you’re not into apps, no problem. You’ll continue to receive posts and podcasts via email.  The Substack is only available for iOS. If you don’t have an Apple device, you can join the waiting list for an Android app here.

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Two years of life disrupted by a global pandemic can teach you a thing or two. It taught me, for instance, that my wife and I could occupy the same space 24/7 without getting stabby. In fact, we’re still friends, which is a good sign that our 47-year relationship hasn’t been a mistake.

Many people learned that they liked working from home better than commuting to an office five days a week, because they could accomplish all the work with only half the stress. The office may never be the same.

And then some of us discovered that what once seemed so critical, like reaching goals and checking off completed tasks, actually don’t rate as top priorities. In the scale of things, they don’t matter much at all.

In other words, the pandemic has given millions a clean break from a fast-moving, high-stress, frenetic existence and introduced us to the pleasures and advantages of “Slow” living.

The Slow Movement

Slow living is actually a movement. It’s trending on social media and in the popular press. Instead of running yourself ragged trying to do everything for everyone, if offers the alternative of trimming the nonessentials from your life and consciously focusing on what gives your life the most meaning and value. (Note also the popularity of Marie Kondo, the queen of decluttering your life of nonessentials.)

For other voices and perspectives on Slow living, check out our latest podcast.  

Slow living is the first (but possibly not the last) popular movement to be sparked by a McDonald’s restaurant. In this case, said Mickey D’s was opening in the center of Rome, Italy, and that just didn’t sit well with some proud locals. Carlo Petrini organized activists into Slow Food, a movement promoting the joys of locally grown, traditionally prepared, regional foods over fast foods of dubious provenance. The movement has spread to 150 countries and aligns itself with sustainability activities.

Slow Food, which is still going strong, evolved into the broader Slow living movement in 2004 with the publication of Carl Honore’s book, In Praise of Slowness.  Honore’ applied the principles of “Slow” to such areas as work, parenting, travel, fashion fitness, and more. Not surprisingly, interest in Slow accelerated during the pandemic:  views of Youtube videos with “slow living” in the title quadrupled between 2019 and 2020.

So what are we talking about?

Being Present

“The central tenet of the Slow philosophy is taking the time to do things properly, and thereby enjoy them more,” says Honore’. It’s not about walking or working at a snail’s pace, it’s about shifting your mindset to be fully present and intentional for the things and people that matter most (which you are better able to do when you pare down your obligations to the essentials in your life). In many ways it’s similar to the meditative practice of mindfulness, which is also about being present in the moment and forcing the speeding thoughts in your brain to be still.

That’s on a personal, practical level. In a larger sense, it’s a rejection of our speed-obsessed civilization. Some advocates have turned Slow into an acronym for Sustainable, Local, Organic, and Whole. “What I really want,” Honore’ wrote, “is for readers to grasp the very counter-cultural idea that the best way to survive and thrived in the fast-paced modern world is not to speed up but to slow down.” In Honore’s popular 2005 TED talk, he reveals that his own wake-up call came when he found himself trying to speed through reading bedtime stories to his son. He realized it made no sense to give his young son a “sound bite” instead of real connection time. Once he committed to bedtime stories without the distractions of a telephone or computer, he found happiness in adopting to his son’s rhythms.

On a personal note, I have certainly used my retirement to slough off as much stress and heart-palpitating excitements as possible.  I would like to think I have my values and priorities in order, and that I am giving them the mindful attention they deserve. It would be tragic, I think, for us to achieve freedom from the fast-paced world of work and not use the opportunity to live slowly – continuing to do what we’re passionate about, but at our own best pace.