Praising slowness Carl Honore

what I’d like to start off with is an

observation which is that if I’ve

learned anything over the last year it’s

that the the supreme irony of publishing

a book about slowness is that you have

to go around promoting it really fast I

seem to spend most of my time these days

you know zipping from city to city

Studio to studio interview to interview

serving up the book and Rudy tiny

bite-size chunks because everyone these

days wants to know how to slow down but

but they want to know how to slow down

really quickly so so I did a spot on CNN

the other day where I actually spent

more time in makeup than I did talking

on air and I think that that that’s not

really surprising though is it because

that’s kind of the world that we we live

in now a world stuck in fast-forward a

world obsessed with speed with doing

everything faster with cramming more and

more into less and less time every

moment of the day feels like a race

against the clock to borrow a phrase

from Carrie Fisher which is in my bio

there I’ll just toss it out again these

days even instant gratification takes

too long and if you think about how we

try to make things better what do we do

well we speed them up don’t worry so you

know we used to dial and now we speed

dial we used to read now we speed read

we used to walk now we speed walk and of

course we used to date and now we speed

date and even things that are by their

very nature slow we try and speed them

up too so I was in New York recently and

I walked past a gym that had an

advertisement in the window for a new

course a new evening course and it was

for you guessed it speed yoga so this is

the perfect solution for time-starved

professionals who want to you know

salute the Sun but only want to give

over about 20 minutes to it these are

sort of the extreme examples in there

and they’re amusing and go to laugh at

but there’s a very serious point and I

think that in the headlong dash of daily

life we we often lose sight of the

damage that this Roadrunner form of

living does to us we’re so marinated in

the culture of speed that we we almost

fail to notice the toll it takes on

every aspect of our lives on our health

our diet our work our relationships in

the environment and our community and

sometimes it takes a wake-up call

doesn’t it to to alert us to the fact

that we’re hurrying through our lie

instead of actually living them that

we’re living the fast life instead of

the good life and I think for many

people that wake-up call takes the form

of an illness you know a burnout or

eventually the body says I can’t take it

anymore

and throws in the towel or maybe a

relationship goes up in smoke because we

have another time or the patience or the

tranquility to be with the other person

to listen to them my wake-up call came

when I started reading bedtime stories

to my son and I found that at the end of

the day I would go into his room and I

just couldn’t slow down you know I’d be

speed reading The Cat in the Hat

I’d be you know I be skipping lines here

paragraphs there sometimes a whole page

and of course my little boy knew the

book inside out so we would quarrel and

what should have been the most relaxing

the most intimate the most tender moment

of the day when a dad sits down to read

to his son became instead this kind of

gladiatorial battle of wills a clash

between his speed and my speed and his

slowness and this went on for some time

until I caught myself scanning a

newspaper article with time-saving tips

for fast people and one of them made

reference to a series of books called

the one-minute bedtime story

and I I can by wynt saying those words

now but my first reaction the time was

very different my first reflex was to

say hallelujah yeah what a great idea

this is exactly what I’m looking for to

speed up bedtime even more but

thankfully a light bulb went on over my

head and my next reaction was very

different and I I took a step back and I

thought whoa you know has it really come

to this am I really in such a hurry that

I’m prepared to fob off my son with a

sound bite at the end of the day and I

put away the newspaper and I was getting

on a plane and I sat there and I did

something I hadn’t done for a long time

which was I did nothing I just fought I

fought long and hard and by the time I

got off that plane I decided I wanted to

do something about it I wanted to

investigate this whole Roadrunner

culture and what it was doing to me and

to everyone else and I had two questions

in my head the first was how did we get

so fast and the second is is it possible

or even desirable to slow down now if

you think about how our world got so

accelerated the usual suspects rear

their heads you think of you know

urbanization consumerism the workplace

technology but I think if you cut

those forces you get to what might be

the deeper driver the the nub of the

question which is how we think about

time itself in other cultures time is

cyclical it’s seen as moving in great

unhurried circles it’s always renewing

and refreshing itself whereas in the

West time is linear it’s a finite

resource it’s always draining away you

either use it or lose it

time is money as Benjamin Franklin said

and I think what that that does to us

psychologically is it it creates an

equation time is scarce so what do we do

well well we speed up don’t we we try

and do more and more with less and less

time we turn every moment of every day

into a race to the finish line a finish

line incidentally that we never reach

but a finish line nonetheless and I

guess that the question is is it

possible to break free from that mindset

and thankfully the answer is yes because

what I discovered when I began looking

around that there is a global backlash

against this culture that tells us that

faster is always better and that busier

is best right across the world people

are doing the unthinkable they’re

slowing down and finding that although

conventional wisdom tells you that if

you slow down you’re roadkill the

opposite turns out to be true that by

slowing down at the right moments people

find that they do everything better they

eat better they make love better they

exercise better they work better if they

live better and in this kind of cauldron

of moments and places and acts of

deceleration lie what a lot of people

now refer to as the International slow

movement now if you’ll permit me a small

act of hypocrisy I’ll just give you a

very quick overview of what some this

what’s going on inside the slow movement

if you think of food many of you will

have heard of the slow food movement

started in Italy but has spread across

the world and now has a hundred thousand

members in 50 countries and it’s driven

by a very simple and sensible message

which is that we get more pleasure and

more health from our food when we

cultivate cook and consume it at a

reasonable pace I think also the

explosion of the organic farming

movement and the Renaissance of farmers

market is another or other illustration

of the fact that people are desperate to

get away from eating and cooking and

cultivating their food on an industrial

timetable they want to get back to

slower rhythms and out of the slow food

movement has grown something called the

slow cities movement which has started

in Italy but has spread right across

Europe and Beyond and in this towns

begin to rethink how they organize the

urban landscape so that people are

encouraged to to slow down and smell the

roses and connect with one another so

they might curb traffic or put in a park

bench or some green space and in some

ways these changes add up to more than

the sum of their parts because I think

when a slow city becomes officially a

slow city it’s kind of like a

philosophical declaration it’s saying to

the rest of the world

and to the people in that town that we

believe that in the 21st century

slowness has a role to play in medicine

I think a lot of people are deeply

disillusioned with the kind of quick fix

mentality you find in conventional

medicine and millions of them around the

world are turning to complementary and

alternative forms of medicine which tend

to tap into sort of slower gentler more

holistic forms of healing

now obviously the jury is out on many of

these complementary therapies and I

personally doubt that the coffee enema

will ever you know gain mainstream

approval but other treatments such as

acupuncture and massage and even just

relaxation clearly have some kind of

benefit and blue-chip medical colleges

everywhere are starting to study these

things to find out how they work and

what we might learn from them sex

there’s an awful lot of fast sex around

isn’t there I was coming to Ottawa nope

no pun intended then I was making my way

let’s say slowly to Oxford and I went

through a newsagent and I saw a magazine

a men’s magazine and it’s set on the

front how to bring your partner to

orgasm in 30 seconds so you know even

sex is on a stopwatch these days now I

you know I I like a quickie as much as

the next person but I think that there’s

an awful lot to be gained from slow sex

from slowing down in the bedroom you

know you tap into that those deeper sort

of you know psychological emotional

spiritual currents and you got a better

orgasm with

build up you to get more bang for your

buck let’s say I mean the pointer

sisters said it most eloquently didn’t

they when they sang the praises of a

lover with a slow hand now we all

laughed at sting a few years ago when he

went tantric but you fast forward a few

years and now you find couples of all

ages flocking to workshops or maybe just

on their own in their own bedrooms

finding ways to put on the brakes and

have better sex and of course in Italy

where I mean Italians always seem to

know where to find their pleasure

they’ve launched an official slow sex

movement the workplace right across much

of the world

I mean North America being a notable

exception working hours have been coming

down and Europe is an example of that

and people people finding that their

quality of life improves as they’re

working less and also that their hourly

productivity goes up now clearly there

are problems with the 35 hour work week

in France too much too soon too rigid

but other countries in Europe notably

the Nordic countries are showing that

it’s possible to have a kick-ass economy

without being a workaholic and Norway

Sweden Denmark and Finland now ranked

among the top six most competitive

nations on earth and they work the kind

of hours that would make the average

American weep with envy and if you go

beyond sort of the the country level

down at the the micro company level more

and more companies now are realizing

that they need to allow their staff

either to work fewer hours or just to

unplug to take a lunch break or to go

sit in a quiet room to switch off their

BlackBerry’s and laptops you at the back

mobile phones

during the workday or on the weekend so

that they have time to recharge and to

for the brain to slide into that kind of

creative mode of thought it’s not just

though these days adults who were

overworked though is it as children -

I’m 37 and my childhood ended in the mid

80s and I look at kids now and I’m just

amazed by the way they race around with