Did anyone else go to Catholic School?  Remember this: “Bless us, Oh Lord, for these thy gifts which we are about to receive from thy bounty through Christ, our Lord, Amen”?  I remember it more like this: “blessusohlordforthesethygiftswhichweareabouttoreceive…mmmmm…through  ChristourLordamen” followed by a mad dash, tripping over each other, to be first in the milk line (otherwise all the chocolate milk would be gone).

Ahhh…the old mealtime prayer.  Who would have thought, after suffering years of mindless daily genuflecting to the crucifix that I would actually be craving a mealtime moment of thanks?  And yet, I am.

My wheels are turning in every direction these days about slow living.  What is it, exactly?  What’s important to me about it?  How can I have more of it in my life?   I like to think that Slow Living is a much needed response to the overwhelming hustle and bustle of modern life — those pervasive and persistent feelings of rushing, of not having enough time, of too much to do.  It’s the antidote to having too many mediocre choices or conversely, not seeing we have choices at all.  Taking a tip from the fine folks over at Slow Food, I’ve come up with this working definition: Slow living is good, clean, and fair living. It is a worldview that encourages living our lives (work, play, relationships, choices) in a state of mindfulness that acknowledges both the interdependency of life on this planet and the sacredness of this moment itself.  The smart people over at slowmovement.com put the need for it this way,  “We may be living great lives but we aren’t “there” for them.”

Well said.  It’s seeing that I have plenty — everything I need — and wanting to truly take in all those pleasures that life offers.  I want to really see them, hear them, feel them, smell them, and taste them; to take life in with all five senses.

Perhaps it is easier said than done; I think we need to start small, or rather, start slow, as in taking a simple inventory of our daily and weekly routines and looking for places we might slow down and truly taste life.  For me, it began with the realization that at least 3 times a day, I have an opportunity to acknowledge all those forces that, quite literally, keep me alive.  Starting the simple but solid habit of taking a moment of appreciation before a meal has slowed me down considerably.

First, it took seeing that:

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harvesting, hauling, making available

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Stopping to really consider it, I do care (a lot) about these animals leading happy, healthy lives and I do care (deeply) about all the ways in which clean, fair food keeps the earth we share much more fertile for generations to come.  But what I’m feeling more clued into, as I stop to offer a bit of thanks before a meal, is the interdependency of our species.  The extent to which we rely on each other to play the roles we play is staggering.

Now when I sit down to eat, I feel a little like a famous actor preparing an Oscar acceptance speech…”well, I have so many people to thank….”

Yes, a thank you to the generous graces of the universe for granting me the enormously privileged life I lead — specifically, this food in front of me.  And at the end of the line, yes, thank you to the friends and family members I choose to share my meal with, particularly those who put loving energy into preparing it.  But what about all the middle-men?  What about gratitude to the cow for sharing her bounty (or sometimes, her life)?  What about the earnest soul of the tomato plant who thrusts itself into the light and comes into a beautiful, red, juicy being?  What about the worms who play their part, thanklessly enriching the soil, and each blade of grass that, almost rebelliously, grows back over and over again to feed the cow?  What about the precious water that catalyzes with everything to make food food?  And those are just the non-humans!

Let’s not forget the conscious farmers who choose to grow food and who toil hour after hour tending to the raw materials.  Then, there are all the extra farm-hand harvesters who do the sweaty work gathering all of our food for us.  There are the processors, the packagers, the transporters, the market owners, the stockers, the cashiers — ALL those players who are involved in bringing that little basket of berries to your food table.  (And we’ve only done one degree of separation.  If we were to also include ALL the people involved to sustain the lives of the people we’ve mentioned so that they can feed us, well, we’d be thanking so long our food would get cold.)

...without 1st having this

Suffice it to say, with all these forces of energy working together to bring food to my table, the least I can do is offer them a bit of thanks.  And, it brings me a little closer to the conscious, slower living that makes everything in life taste sweeter.

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Who was I fooling?  I said at the beginning of this series that it would be 4 parts long.  But, with all the experimenting, documenting, and brainstorming I’ve been doing, I’ve been gathering all kinds of ways to get your time back…so, we’ll keep going until we are out of good ideas.

We’ve (1) Learned to Say No and we’ve (2) realized that Everything is a Choice.  Those two are the tips we can come back to month to month and moment to moment as we get on the path of owning our time.  So much of what happens for us each day regarding our time is a result of those two important practices.   With that in mind, let’s look now to some specific and measurable choices we can make to truly transform our experience of busyness and time.

truly quiet time

3. Get Rid of your TV.

Sorry.  You knew it was coming, right?  I have to say, most people I know who feel busy and “don’t have time for ________” seem to have an awful lot of time for TV.  Even those of us who claim we don’t “watch” TV — we just “have it on” — still suffer the distraction of noise and changing images.  These are the last things we need when we are seeking a sense of inner peace, focus, and productivity.

In my own experiments and in polling friends and clients, I’ve come to learn that it’s much easier to quit something completely than to attempt to cut back.  (That’s why dieting can be so darn difficult.)  So, throw a nice piece of fabric over your TV screen until Christmas and notice what it’s like to get all those hours back.  I’m telling you, after 21 days and you won’t even miss it.

4. Stop telling yourself that email is faster.

plenty of time to learn a new hobby

Unless you are coordinating multiple people for an event, in which case email is much more expedient, composing email  is simply not a quicker form of communication.  Pick up the phone or say it in person.

5. While you’re at it, cut back considerably on your computer use.

Let’s face it — many of us waste loads of hours on the computer.  Facebook, Youtube, online shopping, over-working, unnecessary emailing — it all sucks away our time and then we wonder why we don’t have any.  Sure, it’s easy to say that being on the computer for one reason or another is the norm, but it doesn’t have to be, at least for you.  I have a friend who turns on her computer once a week, and she doesn’t miss a thing.  What she does have is plenty of time to read, cook from scratch, do her artwork, and exercise every day.  She also sleeps 10 hours per night.  How about that?

Try this for the rest of the month: turn your computer OFF (this includes handheld computers and phones) after 6:00 or 6:30 p.m. and don’t turn it on again until morning…and turn it off for the whole weekend.  When I started doing that, I was amazed at how much more time I had, and even more amazed at how much more efficient I was during my ON hours.  Want your time back?  Log off.

food coop

6.  Co-op.

Co-op (meaning engage in tasks cooperatively) whatever and wherever you can.  So often the pursuit of saving time can be a paradox.  You spend a little and get even more back.  I’ve found this to be true in my participation at my local food coop — a few hours of work a month and somehow I seem to actually spend less time “hunting and gathering” my food, in addition to all the other benefits of coop membership, like saving tons of money and knowing where my food comes from.

As an interdependent species, it makes sense to interdepend on each other — sharing in responsibilities and in the benefits of consensus — and it builds community in the long haul.  I have a friend who participates in a monthly soup exchange.  She spends a few hours shopping for and making a huge quantity of a delicious soup (enough for 9 large mason jars).  Then, she drops the jars off at the soup exchange and gets 9 different soups in return — enough to feed her family for up to 2 weeks!

So many tasks can be accomplished cooperatively — grocery-buying, gardening, child care, breastfeeding (or milk-sharing), carpooling, car-sharing, home-schooling, meal-swapping, yard work, etc.  In fact, pretty much anything can be cooped — all it requires is a great idea and a bit of organizing — and in most cases, the time you save interweaves with saving money too.  So, stop going it alone!

7. Take public transportation.

crucial time for daydreaming

All that delicious time!  In addition to draining our bank accounts when we fill our cars up with gas and contributing to a host of rising environmental issues every time we get behind the wheel, we also waste incredible amounts of time driving because we can’t do anything else. Taking public transportation gives us those precious moments back so we can balance our checkbooks, read newspapers or books, write birthday cards and letters,  make grocery lists, plan parties and vacations, compose texts and emails, or do nothing and bask in the relaxation of mindless donothingness.  This week: experiment!  Check out your local bus or subway schedule and notice what it’s like to have all those commuting hours to do with what you please.

What’s working for you, dear readers, as you experiment with having the time of your life?  More tips coming soon….