Everyone you meet always asks if you have a career, are married, or own a house as if life was some kind of grocery list. But no one ever asks you if you are happy. – Heath Ledger

Deeper and Slower is Better

I love this quote from the late Heath Ledger, he was a really talented and fascinating human. The quote touches on something really important in our society, the way we connect with each other. When we see each other we say hello, often it comes in the form of, hey, how are you? Of course we don’t actually mean that, it’s really just a greeting like good morning. If you want to prove this to yourself, the next time someone says hello, how are you, settle and start telling them how you really are. You’ll see their eyes and body language tell you exactly what they were really asking. Don’t get me wrong, some people do mean it, but most do not. The majority of our human interactions and connections are, and are intended to be, superficial and unfortunately judgemental.

The first part of the Ledger quote gets to that, people, when they meet you, want to know what you do, if you’re married, your politics or religion. Because knowing these things allows them to put you in a neat little box, and once you’re in that box, they know how to think about you because they have pre-judged everyone who fits in that box. It feels like efficiency, it makes it easier for people to move on with their busy lives. But it’s an unfortunately shallow level of interaction and connection. It also means all of us are constantly feeling judged, and often, looked down upon.

Part of the issue is that since we’re all leading busy lives, we are often in a hurry to move through the current moment and on to the next. The problem with this is that it means we have fewer deep and significant interactions and connections with people. Speed is the enemy, we really need to slow our lives down, honestly what are we rushing to? It’s a thought I always have when it’s Wednesday and people say I can’t wait for this week to be over. Our lives are shorter than we ever want to think about, rushing through time just brings us to the end of our lives sooner and nobody really wants that.

As I’ve mentioned here on the blog before, over the last twenty years I’ve typically worked for two to three years and then took a year off to travel. Often during this time I was hiking or backpacking overseas. One of the biggest things I noticed during these times was how much time slowed down. When I no longer was moving from meeting to meeting, living my life by appointments on a daily calendar time really slowed down. Days seemed longer, which bleeds into the sense of time for weeks and months. My one year off always felt like the same amount of time as the three years working.

Lately I’ve started seeing more people talk about slow travel. Our work life is hectic and unfortunately as Americans our vacations are often equally as hectic. We have a seven day vacation, so we fly out on Friday night or Saturday morning, we have planned activities every day, visit three different cities, then we fly back on Sunday and go to work on Monday. We end up returning from vacation more stressed out and tired than when we left. People often joke that they need a vacation from their vacation, and they really do.

Slow travel is the opposite of this, it’s the idea that you go to one place for a week, two weeks or a month. Instead of planned itineraries and running from town to town, you stay in one place the whole time. You have coffee and eat in the neighborhood, you get to be like a local for a time and truly get to know the place you’re in and hopefully some of the people. Most importantly, you really get to relax and come home from vacation rested and with more of a sense of the place you visited and likely with a couple of new deep connections.

The more you extend this philosophy to your whole life, the deeper the connections you’ll have and I’ll bet the less rushed and harried you’ll begin to feel. I know this, because as a really strong introvert I actively avoid the shallow connections and small-talk opportunities. I crave the slower, deeper interactions and connections. Sure, it means I have far fewer of them, but the ones I do have are deeper and in my opinion better. For me, where interaction is concerned, it’s always quality over quantity, so I’ll always think deeper and slower is better and I believe it will help you have happier days my friends. ~ Rev Kane