The Speed Trap

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Juliet Schor has slowed the pace of her life by setting firm limits on when she works. "My work time is limited by my childcare hours. I don't work on weekends. My life outside of work has also been simplified. I rarely drive a car. I ride my bike. I just don't do all the things that make me crazy. And my husband, who is from India and has a much calmer approach to life, has been instrumental in helping me slow down.He has taught me to just do one thing at a time."

We all have a chance to slow down. Maybe not at work or in raising kids, but someplace in our lives. It might be turning off the rapid-fire imagery of television and taking a stroll through the neighborhood. It might be scaling back the household budget and spending Saturdays fishing or gardening instead of shopping. It might be clearing a spot on your daily calendar for meditation, prayer, or just daydreaming. It might be simply deciding to do less and not squeezing in a trip to the bookstore when you don't have time for a relaxing visit.

Manzini has another suggestion. "In Italy there is something called the movement for slow food," he says. "It's a group of people who have decided to promote the idea that there are things that matter more than speed. The idea of defending the quality of something that is slow is very interesting to me." Launched after the arrival of McDonald's in the heart of Rome, the group soon attracted 40,000 members in 40 countries.

That's how I've started the "Slow Is Beautiful" revolution in my own life--right in the kitchen, scaling back my busy schedule to find more time for cooking good meals and then sitting down to enjoy them in a festive, unrushed way with my wife, son, and friends. Even cleaning up after dinner can offer a lesson in the pleasures of slowness, as I learned a while back when our dishwasher went on the fritz. Before that I had always just tossed dirty dishes into the machine as fast as possible and hurriedly wiped the counters so that I could get on to more worthwhile activities. But when I was forced to wash dishes by hand, I discovered that although it took longer I had way more fun; I'd put some jazz or blues or zydeco on the stereo and sing along, or just daydream as I stacked dishes and glasses on the drying rack. What had been 5 or 10 minutes of drudgery, filling the dishwasher and desperately wishing I was doing something else, turned into 15 or 20 minutes of relaxation. Our dishwasher is fixed now, but I still find myself looking forward to cleaning up the kitchen. A lot of nights I wash the dishes by hand anyway, and when I load the dishwasher, now I do it slowly and without the slightest hint of displeasure.

Workers of the world, relax. You have nothing to lose but your microwaved burritos and your overstuffed Day Runners.

Jay Walljasper is editor at large of Utne Reader.

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