Traveling Light Blog by Travel Writer Colleen Friesen

“To be happy? — we must be kind. To be wise? — we must look and think. No changing of place at a hundred miles an hour will make us one whit stronger, or happier, or wiser. There was always more in the world than man could see, walked they ever so slowly; they will see it no better for going fast. The really precious things are thought and sight, not pace. It does a bullet no good to go fast; and a man, if he be truly a man, no harm to go slow; for his glory is not at all in going, but in being.”  - John Ruskin

I’ve been cranking life into a lower gear lately. Sometimes, it feels like I’m going so slow that there’s not enough momentum to keep me from tipping right over…and so I nap. Or meditate. Or read a book. Or just hang in the moment.

I am practising the art of not always being productive; a very over-rated, over-sold concept that I’ve absorbed, in spite of all my protests to the contrary. I confess:

• I am a rather compulsive ticker of to-do lists.
• A keeper of graphs of things-done.
• A noter of blog-stats and views and metrics and pitches made and articles produced.

These are all good things and I still enjoy that sense of accomplishment that my habits evoke, but I’m trying to be a non-doing person too.

A human being, rather than a human doing.

Today is a steady dripping rainy day on the Not-So-Sunny-Sunshine-Coast. It’s a good day for slowing down. Moving methodically and paying attention to a much more interesting list that is right in front of me;

• The eagle that is, this very minute, calling out squeaky cries.
• The gulls counter calls.
• The smell of the yeast as the bread dough rises on the counter.
• The steady patter of the rain.
• The light wash of the waves.
• The drone of a float plane.
• Silence.

Take some deep belly breaths. Slow Down. You Move Too Fast.

Sit with your own lovely self and just be. Just for a little while. I promise it’s a good thing.

Related articles:

• The Slow Movement: What Exactly Is It? (naturemoms.com)
• “Quotes I came across..” (thepatientdreamer.com)
• Go slow – spring has sprung! (inspiredreflection.wordpress.com)

“Where all think alike, no one thinks very much.” – Walter Lippman

It’s so easy to become complacent within our own social system, culture, family and friends. But when transplanted by travel, however briefly we exist among The Others, it requires of us the need to reflect, ponder, compare and wonder.

Being in a new part of the world challenges everything I think I know about human nature, morality and social mores.

Travel throws all my preconceived notion of how things-should-be  into a metaphorical fan the size of infinty, flips it, frappes the heck out of it and throws the scattered remains at my feet.

“There,” says the World. “Whaddya think of that?!”

That, for me, is the beauty of travel.

Though I am a big proponent for getting out and about in the world, I also believe that you can achieve this same effect without leaving your home.  It’s definitely harder to pull off but it is achievable.

It starts and ends with that old hippie adage that has stood the test of time:  Question Everything. 

This seems rather bizarre, but here it is, my ‘claim code’ that allows Technorati to verify my blog addition to their listing… 

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