One of my favorite things to do from time to time is watch a good TED talk or two. The variety of ideas and passion with which they're shared makes me feel like I'm in college again. I can ALWAYS find something intellectually stimulating and surprisingly applicable to my life.
Case in point: Carl Honore's talk on slowness. What caught my attention was his story describing how he was first introduced to the issue of time and why our Western society often thinks faster is better. It all started when he saw in ad for 1 minute bedtime stories. As a father who was used to doing a bang-up story time job with his son in an effort to get bedtime over with ASAP (which usually ended up being the opposite of a relaxing and intimate ritual between father and son), this seemed for a second to be the perfect solution. He quickly realized how messed up that was and got involved in The Slow Movement. His latest offering? A book, In Praise of Slowness - which I hope to get my hands on soon.
But this isn't a promo post for Mr. Honore. His talk simply got me thinking about the way I parent and asking myself some tough questions:
- Do I allow Noweo to fully explore the things she's interested in? Or do I rush her from activity to activity?
- Am I in tune with her natural rhythms?
- Am I patient as Noweo tries to learn new skills? Or do I end up doing it for her, telling myself that she'll learn eventually?
- Am I committed to feeding her a varied, nutritional diet even if it might take a little longer to prepare?
- Do I recognize when she wants my full attention? Do I give it to her?
- Am I deliberate in teaching her, reading to her, explaining things to her or do I just let her watch what I do and assume it'll rub off?
- Do we take time as a family to simply be together?
Like anybody, I'm better at some things than others, and there is definitely room for improvement, but where to start? As providence would have it, I came across a fellow blogger who answered that question for me. Dana from
Dana's Pink Ribbon shared some thoughts on mindfulness that are definitely worth taking a look at. Quoting Dana,
"Mindfulness is bringing your complete attention, focus, and awareness on what you are experiencing at the present moment."
What does mindfulness have to do with slowing down? I think that it's because we spend so much time rushing through things because we're constantly thinking about getting to the next thing, whether that be a new project or task, or throwing our feet up for a break. Either way, I think it can be easier to think about the future than the present because the future tends to seem better. That's certainly true for my life. Sometimes, I just want to get to night time and go to sleep.
If it's one thing I've learned from being a mother, it's that babies insist that we be present with them. They don't think about the future. They are fully engaged in the moment. They're in no hurry to move on to the next thing, and therefore are able to have high quality, fulfilling experiences every minute of every day. If we live like we've arrived, then there's no need to rush. Who wouldn't want that?
I believe that if we can practice this mindfulness, coupled with a concentrated effort to slow things down and live and (especially) parent more deliberately, we'll be able to see problems more clearly, have better conversations, better food, better relationships, better lives.
I'm going to be hashing out this idea on the blog a bit more and searching for practical ways that I can change my parenting practices so that I can positively answer all of those questions I've posed to myself, so stay tuned.
What about you? Are you burnt out from being in the fast life? Need to slow things down? Want to parent more mindfully? Or are you a picture of zen perfection?
