This week, we are continuing to apply Slowing Down to our daily lives, which for many of us are extra full in the month of December.
We are eager to hear how your Slowing Down experiment is going as you’ve had some time to try it out. Were you able to recall it at the time you wanted to? Was there a change in the situation, or interaction? And if you haven’t yet chosen one, it’s not too late! Click here to read all about it. We’d love to hear any reflections you have.
Do you need an extra boost of support to help you slow down? Try joining us for a “virtual meditation” on a Saturday, through our private Facebook Group. Details for the meditation each week are posted in the group. If you don’t have an account, click here for details.
Easwaran often speaks about the importance of human relationships, which he says “are often the first casualties in a speeded-up way of life.” Are there any practical tips from the reading that you’d like to try for the rest of this month? Is there something else that strikes you about this reading? Please share your reflections below.
This is an excerpt from Easwaran's book, Take Your Time.
Take Time for Relationships
Personal relationships are often the first casualties in a speeded-up way of life. “Take time for relationships” may sound like odd advice. I have just suggested freeing time, and now I’m saying to give more time to others. And it’s true that relationships require time – sometimes a good deal of time. But it is time well spent.
Take the simple question of meals. As the pace of life has accelerated, a great many of us have got out of the habit of sitting together and sharing a leisurely meal with family or friends. Often we eat alone, in a hurry, on our feet, even on the run or behind the wheel. I know people who seldom really eat a meal at all; they forage, or string together a series of snacks. This is not only the result of hurry, it adds to it. We can slow down by taking the time – making the time – to find a friend or two and create a little oasis in our day where we can shut out the pressures around us and enjoy human company.
Eating together is considered a sacrament in many cultures. These simple bonds play a part in holding a society together. So even if you live alone, arrange to share a meal regularly with friends or family. I know people who live alone through choice, but who carefully maintain and nurture personal relationships by getting together with friends to prepare and enjoy meals. It is not only nutrition you are getting when you do this, but also the loving companionship shared by everyone at the table.
Personal relationships, of course, not only take time, they take “quality time.” This is especially true with children, where what matters is not only the number of hours we spend but also the attention we give, the love we show, the extent to which we enter into the child’s world instead of dragging him or her into our own. Schedules are fine at the office, but children have a sense of time that is very different – and much more natural. They don’t know about appointments and parking meters and living in the fast lane, and we cannot make them understand. All we can do is hurry them along.
We adults can learn to slow down enough to enter their world; it’s not their job to speed up and join ours. Where is the hurry? What period of life is more precious than childhood? If we understood its worth, we would devote ourselves to slowing down the pace of childhood instead of rushing our children out of it. The time we spend on our children while they are young will be more than repaid when they reach their teenage years.