#23: Slow Down

If you were to write a book, on what theme or subject matter would it be based, and why? (Stanford/93)

The world is too fast. In fact, so are our lives. One moment you're struggling to understand a concept or a process in biology. The next moment, you're doing a test on it.  They say time is money. They say it's a resource. Sometimes, time is nothing. A resource cannot be used if it is only being stored. A resource cannot be considered a resource if it's being consumed with no benefits.  In an attempt to "save" time, our world today is too fast.

Thus, a book about slowing down would be ideal for our world. Many people today rush through their daily routines and fail to stop and think, "What is the point behind this?" Students read textbooks and write endless pages of notes without understanding anything they've read. What is the use of copying down endless words and diagrams when all that we can think about is finishing something just so that we can move onto our next piece of work? Maybe, all we need is time. The number of pages we've written or read are not what show the growth in our knowledge, but rather, they're the things we remember and apply to life.

Technology too, joins education in the race against time today. We're constantly surrounded by new cellphones, music players, and laptops, and so many "improved" versions of gadgets. You get a computer, and a laptop comes out. You buy an iPad. The next month, Apple launches the iPad 2.We are always bombarded with new features and improvements, but how can we know how much better an object is when we haven't even had time to use its older version. You will always have to slow down at some point in your life if you want to take in anything. It's very much like breathing and running. You can't take in oxygen when you're running endlessly.

There is so much more that people miss when they hurry through life. There's nature, knowledge, fun, and potential life-changing experiences, all making up a tiny fraction of what we're truly missing. If there is so much that is slipping through our fingers, why don't we do anything to stop it? The answer is simple. Half the time, we don't realize how fast we are moving until the end. We're unconscious to how we progress through life, and sometimes, it can be extremely difficult to change something that we've been doing for what feels like forever. Our behaviors and habits are not the only things that need to be altered; our mindsets do too.

A book about slowing down can illuminate people on a way of life that is different from the usual, but yet a perfect alternative with no harms. A book that can open our eyes to our surroundings and the little things always contribute to our heart, mind, and soul.

Speeding through life qualifies as surviving, but it will never mean living life to the fullest. In the process of trying to save time, the little time used up can only rendered wasted if nothing is achieved from it. Ultimately, time is not saved, but wasted. Slowing down can be time consuming, but if what we obtain from the time spent is important, every second of that experience would be worth it. Almost nothing in life can be summed up or understood in a few minutes, or even a few hours. Some things will always need more time, and this period of time could stretch across days, years, even decades.  As Audrey Hepburn once said, "Living is like tearing through a museum. Not until later do you really start absorbing what you saw, thinking about it, looking it up in a book, and remembering- because you can't take it in all at once."

Maybe, such a book will make people stop for a second to look around and absorb everything in. You might understand a concept that just seemed impossible before. You might hear music within the chaos in a city or the whooshing of the wind. You might see the ferns dull from green to brown after the monsoon, or the green leaves transform into vivid shades of red, or even the Winterline create a mosaic of cool and warm colors across the sky if you just slow down, stop, and look around you.