Slow It All Down

Slow to idle, Geordi

Something I saw this week bothered me, and I want to bring it up here, for you to think on.

We’re all moving too fast. Thinking too fast. Speeding through the world.

The journalists are eager to tell us that time itself is accelerating, but a second is still a second - the time it takes for a light photon of a specific wavelength to traverse one metre.

We’re going too fast.

I can’t help but look back at the past, and realise how things were so much slower back then. People walked more carefully; they had a choice of toe striking, sole striking, or heel striking when they walked.

Walking toes first is graceful. One heel is always up, even if the other foot is planted firmly on the floor. There used to be a word for this kind of word, but “mincing” is now a pejorative term used by homophobes to call someone gay in an insulting way.

Many years ago, somebody described a class of warriors as “walking with a peculiar rolling gait.” That class of warrior comprised the nobility of a culture, and they walked the way they were trained - with grace and poise.

Even into the thick of a battle, they moved slowly, with poise.

We’re rushing through our lives, now. We’ve all got deadlines, we need to stop what we’re doing to answer our phones, we’ve all got to pack as much toil and slog into each waking second of the day, we’ve got to burn through all those cold calls and do more tomorrow than we did today, and this is killing us.

Look at the actor Woody Allen. I know, he’s problematic - but you know something else? His schtick is twitching. Rushing. Being nervous. Moving like somebody on fast forward.

Does that sound like a person who is in control? I didn’t think so.

You know what happens when you do the opposite to Woody Allen - slow it down, suppress the desire to react to everything, put the brakes on your movements till it feels as if you’re moving 1 m/s slower than everybody in the room or on the street?

You become magnetic.

The space around you fills with an aura of magnetic personal power.

You walk as though you own half the planet.

And people will notice this.

If you feel the irresistible urge to walk on your heels like everybody else and just pitter patter along like all the myrmidons, just let it slide. You don’t respond to the world. The world responds to you.

Slow it all down. Learn to walk like the world is your plaything. To move, and speak, and act, slowly, with languor, and grace.

And the world will adapt to you, as if time did not exist.