Uncomfortable Stillness

What’s behind it?

Slow is a word I’ve heard quite a few times lately. A few friends and clients mentioned it, mostly in a sentence containing “work going slow.”

I hear their concern. I know how it feels when you’re not getting new clients and don’t know when it’ll change. Or when you’re trying to bring a project to life and everything seems to move so slowly.

It can feel scary, frustrating, and uncomfortable.

“Why?” is the question I ask most frequently about myself or the outer world. Not in a judging way, in an inquiring way. When a TV news anchor announces some felony or crime, I always ask in my head, “Yes, but why? What are their context and experiences? What brought them to do that?”

So, let’s ask ourselves “Yes, but why?”

I don’t mean we investigate the external causes. In our case, it could be because of the market or any other factor.

I invite us to ask ourselves,

Why do we perceive the situation as slow? And why does this slowness make us uneasy? What brings us to these perception and feelings?

Pause here.

Take a couple of minutes to ponder your answer before I give you mine.

Are you back?

OK. I have a theory. But first, let me disclose that there might be biological reasons for this uneasiness in slowness, and, despite being a neuroscience nerd, I haven’t researched them yet.

However, we know how intertwined biology, socio-cultural context, and psychology are.

So, my theory focuses on our Western socio-cultural context.

What is that thing that despises inefficiency, natural cycles, people, and the planet?

Did you answer “capitalism”?

Correct!

Capitalism imposes velocity, efficiency, and productivity no matter what time, day, or month it is. It teaches that slow is bad and workers must always be on and effective.

But capitalism doesn’t only apply to work anymore. As The Blob, it spread, expanded, and enveloped all of our society and culture. So, we grew up internalizing its precepts where slowness is blamed, rest is nonessential, and time is commodified.

OK, I have another question for you.

Where do slowness, rest, and expansive time belong to?

They belong to nature.

In its cycles and seasons.

In its seeds, buds, and cocoons that take the time it takes to sprout, blossom, and hatch.

So, my theory is that we feel uneasy in slowness because of our severed ties with nature.

We are part of nature, we are (human) animals, yet we are disconnected from its way of being and acting.

Capitalism managed to extract us from our wider community and isolate us. We serve it better like this. Like numbed workers marching in sync, each on one’s own.

But many of us have reconnected or are reconnecting with nature and our deeper beings while acting to dismantle this system. So, I have hope that at some point we’ll succeed.

Meanwhile, also to contribute to this dismantling, let’s explore what “slow” actually means to us.

Shall we?

With care,
Giada

---

🗂️ Open Tabs

Stuff I kept thinking about or still open in my browser

• 10 things Melissa Carter learned about being an artist from recovery.

• Slowness as a key element to creativity (and movements) as Kathryn Vercillo shows us in her newsletter.

Work with me!

Hello! I’m Giada (Jah-da, more or less), an Impact Coach who blends coaching and neuroscience to empower change agents to turn their impactful vision into action and contribute to collective well-being while feeling good and not burning out in the process. Sounds interesting? Let’s have a chat!