A Prayer for Slowness
Searching for a Human-Paced Life
When does productivity bleed into alienation? How do we resist the pressures to constantly be doing? What is the toll that this pressure takes on our minds and bodies? And how might our psyches change when paired instead with the rhythmic sway of trees or the crackle of a flame?
Please, somebody tell me, when did we all get so damn busy?
I’m struggling to write this week. I returned from Mexico after leading a rewarding psilocybin retreat, yet barely slept. Back in Portland, I hit the ground running and kicked off the third cohort of Inner Trek last weekend - the leading psilocybin facilitator training program here in Oregon, where I serve as a lead educator. I also returned to a full week of clients, and a 1:1 psychedelic journey I facilitated.
This week, I don’t have any mythopoetic wonderings or explorations into depth psychology or useful tips for writing.
Because I’m exhausted. And I’m guessing you are too.
Listen: the last thing I want to do here is whine about how tired I am. Poor me, flying to Mexico to serve people psychedelics and then come home to a career that my 18 year old self would die for. I get it. I’m just being real with you.
Everyone I know is busy. For older readers, let me ask: thirty years ago, did you have to schedule with your friends simply to have a phone call? Did you have to plan three weeks in advance to have dinner? Did you feel as if you were constantly playing catch up, or felt the gnawing pressure to ”post everyday”? Is time really speeding up, or does that just happen to us all?
Maybe some of you reading this are living rare lives of ceremonial richness close to mountains, embedded in a community of loved ones and organic food. Maybe you’ve heeded the increasingly prescient words of techno-philosopher Jeron Lanier and deleted social media entirely. Maybe you’ve thrown the iphone in the trash, and now take five minutes to send a text message on a flip phone. Maybe you don’t have a phone, and live like a Scottish Jacobite farmer.
If that’s the case, bless you. I’m just not there yet. But I want to be. I want to slow down, and I have a sense that I am not alone in that desire.