I saw this on the Tube yesterday. I don’t know what it was advertising, but it caught my attention and then it permeated my mind...
Mostly because I do not tend to go with the slow. Or the flow for that matter. Historically, I have gone with the busy, the active and the frenetic. That is just how I have been wired. But this whole sober thing, this whole living and examining the life I am living has changed me. I can go with the slow and the flow today. I think.
I am winding up four days in London with two girlfriends. And I didn’t really have a way. I just went with the flow. Having been here before, there were many things already crossed off my list. I didn’t need or want to see a great many touristy things because I already saw them, albeit 35 years ago. But once in a lifetime was good for Buckingham Palace, which as memory serves, was way better in my head than in real life. And so it is with so many things...
But I did go with the flow. I allowed others to be in charge and I just went along with whatever. I wasn’t so accommodating that I didn’t express an opinion if I had one, I just really didn’t have that many and was content to just wander aimlessly. Which if you know me at all, seems like some sort of spiritual growth if ever there was one.
But there really wasn’t much that was slow this time here in London. We walked 20k+ steps per day and were busy moving from one activity to another. It was a lovely time and I regret none of it. But we didn’t really languish or relish in much of anything for long...it was active and busy and ever changing.
Today, that all changes and the part of my trip whose mantra could rightly be called “Go with the Slow...” begins. Today, I travel to Dublin and begin to slow down and take my time as I travel around the country, seeing whatever I am supposed to see. I have only one thing on my agenda: Giants Causeway. I feel that I need to see this, although I am not sure why. It has just called to me for decades and so it is the only thing on my list of things to see in the next 10 days.
Instead of having a great number of things to do and see in Ireland, I intend to go with the slow. I want to hike, to walk, to read, to write, to lounge about. I am not sure how many days I will spend in each place I decide to stop in, just that I will be moving from place to place without reservation or agenda. And that feels so right to me.
There have been a couple of times where I have felt like I needed to make a reservation or lock some shit down, but I have resisted that temptation and instead just allowed this trip to be whatever it will be. I am going to sleep which is something that I seem to be doing every other night over here. Which is not good. I intend to write, read and just allow myself to not be busy, or anxious or worried. In fact, if I find myself in some little village, tucked away from the rest of the world, so be it. I am fine holing up in some little cottage and spending all of my time there if that is how it goes.
I think, at least in part, going with the slow requires me to let loose my ideas and plans and schemes and wants. To instead allow the needs to drive my life for the next 10 days. To just be present and patient and allow life to hover ever closer. To not be in some grand hurry, which if you know me at all, is not how I have ever lived my life. I am a doer, a planner, a “I am going to get a ton of shit done in a small window of time,” kind of person. And this trip isn’t about me changing who I am fundamentally, but instead allowing for parts of myself that are often overlooked, under expressed and underdeveloped to appear when I put the hard charging, “I have a lot to do today” person in the backseat and allow this softer, more relaxed version of myself to appear.
We will see how this goes. There is a reason this softer version defies common expression in the daily living...the other part of me does not cede control well. And my softer side wants to fight no one for any kind of expression or control. It is just too much work.
I find myself wondering if other people have this internal struggle in them. Is it hard for them to sit down their more dominant self to allow for the lesser expressed side of themselves to emerge. Does it need as much coaxing as mine does? Is it physically and psychically painful? Does it feel almost impossible?
I am really more of a “let’s get this shit done,” kind of person, than “go with the slow...” It is going to be interesting though because I am committed to going with the slow. I do not want to hurry, or plan or stress. I just want my life to unfold one moment unto the next and be present for it all. I feel like it is finally time that I allowed myself the time to just be alone with myself, for all the feelings I try to out run on a daily basis. I know what all the busy is about...it is and always has been about me outrunning me. This inner person who has remained so completely and abjectly terrified of her own interiority...it is high time I stopped running and planning and scheming and just allowed my life to unfurl itself by going with the slow...
Not again and not still. But perhaps for the first time ever.
