The Art of Slowing Down

Would you rather sit inside a mall, where everyone seems unfamiliar, where every one is moving at a fast paced rate...where everyone seems to be busy looking at their phone or laptop... where everyone seems to be wearing some new fashion.

Or would you rather be sitting at a restaurant with a window overlooking a mountain filled with trees...

Or would you rather sit and relax and smell the brewed coffee and freshly baked bread...with people you know, with strangers who have become friends...where everyone has their own unique way of expressing their clothes..

Would you rather eat a home cooked meal using ingredients that have been freshly picked at your backyard...

Or would you rather buy something that seems fresh inside a mall, a vegetable that you can store in your fridge for 1 month without getting destroyed...

a vegetable that has been stored in plastic, paraded in front of hundreds of buyers...

Today I was reminded of the art of slowing down. Everyone seems to want to make time faster. Everything is instant from the noodles that we eat, fromn the chat messages and text messages we receive, everything and I mean everything is done faster, everything is finished faster...every story ends faster.

I suddenly miss the home cooked meals of my lola, she cooks beans and stew using firewood and she has her own special sardines recipe which I was not able to find in any restaurant no matter how hard I try.  Now, that times have changed I don't see her doing that anymore.

Most of the time I am stucked with instant food, something purchased outside of our home. More canned goods and noodles on the shelves, very little vegetables and fruits inside the house.

Because of this changes, I am doing  my best to continue the idea of buying vegetables and fruits, preparing them the traditional way if I can.

I am just wondering what my own children would experience in the future...would I be able to provide the same home cooked meals for them.

I would have to try at some point to recapture the feeling of a food that has been served well.

When my friends come over, If I can...i encourage them to eat at a restaurant that creates slow food

. It gives us time to share ideas on the table, gives us time to explore the details of how the food was prepared. If I can manage it we do away with any fast food centers where everything is just fried and served.

It sometimes bothers me..why humans want to make everything faster, it could have been great if the time we have saved could be used to explore more meaningful relationship.

 But if the time we saved would only be used to earn more material things...then I believe that is merely wasted time.

 I do not contradict technology in any way...but I feel that we are also losing something valuable in wanting to make everything faster.

It is like we are hoping to make our life faster...its as if we want to die earlier, it feels as if we are always running out of time, we are always running in circles.

I just want to take the time to sit down and relax, in place filled with grass somewhere.

Sometimes I look at my sister who is already pregnant and is about to give birth in May. I wonder where the time went. I wish I had learned how to slow down when I was younger, to appreciate playing with my sister or just talking about anything.

Now she is already going to be a mother, something that I can still be a part of, but I sometimes wish time would slow down, there are things that will never be the same again.

Sometimes I wish I took the time to learn about my first boyfriend. I don't know why I wanted to rush so many things when I was with him.

I wish I could turn back some of the time I have spent rushing for a goal that I did not understand myself. If people did not rush us to get married I could have been holding his hands right now. I don't know why people rush to get married, rush to have kids, rush to experience everything without feeling every moment and fiber of it...

I was reminded of the art of slowing down,,,,of chewing my food thoroughly and of experiencing every bite. Our end goal is to go back in the ground one of this days and I just feel that every fiber of our being could have been explored.

the only thing I can handle now is myself...and I will take the time to learn about myself, of who  I am as I walk.

To take the time to see how much I will change in a year...because the world is so focused on making things faster...it is crazy...

There are some of us who want to sit down...who want to feel the earth in our hands.

To feel every emotion there is...

To slow down means to focus on the quality of experiences...not the quantity...

To dance slowly if we must... they say time will not wait for anybody... I say time waits for us to learn how to blend well with its own turn.

In the coming days..I will look into the eyes of my friends  family members  and strangers with much more eagerness to take in what they have to say, before the time comes to an end.