A rhythm of balance

Throw out crap, bring in flow.

I spent the first days of the new year as a bear inside a winter nest, stretching legs under voluptuous blankets, snarling while moving the coffee cup from right hand to left, watching from an eye corner as birch billets crack and sparkle and chink in the fireplace, and a twilit day yawns as it turns into a blue hour.

Behind those snarls and half-closed eyelids, in my inner house, I threw out crap, wiped away the residues of stuffiness, picked up items that lay around and decided whether I keep them or not.

Days of slow pace.

I sorted, made room for the fresh air, and groused as exhilaration and exuberance already called my name behind the open window.

Though I’m not a hustler or go-getter by any measure, my relationship with the trendy slow-gentle-calm life is contradictory.

Inevitably, if the face in the mirror resembles a hyperventilating squirrel, it’s not time to run after another acorn but to stop the hustle and calm down. I know the value of my winter nest and inner cleaning.

But slow life, as an ultimate goal? What does it even mean?

Years ago, I had my year of nothing: an era of isolation with few connections to the outer world when I emptied my life—relationships, jobs, passions, home, desires, dreams, identities, missions, agendas, beliefs—to a point where there was not much but raw existence left. I know what it is to face oneself, to sit in silence without anchor points, without attachments, to watch the sun rise and set and breathe in, breathe out. And not for a fancy 7-day retreat followed up by several pastel-coloured Instagram posts of bliss, but for months and months with an audience of one.

It was intentional, it was hard-core, and yes, it was a remarkable period of transformation. Yet, despite and because of this period, I have no admiration for slow-calm as an endpoint, a finish line worth aspiring to.

The natural and balanced flow of life isn’t either fast or slow. It just is.

From largo to prestissimo, it has a rhythmic pace within every scale. It flows in all forms and constantly adjusts its tempo unless forced to a limited cadence. Shrinking the beauty of life’s multidimensionality into a tight box of slow-gentle-calm is an insult to life itself.

Excitement can be more enlightening than resting, motion more heart-opening than reflection, work more refreshing than meditation.

We have entered the year 2025. The world is moving at an enormous speed, and we have no idea what slow really is.

I mean, take a trip back in time. Imagine living as an average person in an average village in the 18th century. From a perspective of humankind’s history, it’s not so long ago.

The slowness starts before your first glimpse of light, as your life follows the path of the merchandise family you’re born in. You are tied into either the village you were born in or the village 5 km away—depending on whether you marry your 2nd cousin neighbour to keep the family line going or your father’s business partner to strengthen finances. Your long-anticipated once-in-a-lifetime journey to the capital takes three weeks in one direction by packhorse (and if you’re lucky or elitist enough, by carriage)—and no, the travel doesn’t include exciting galloping through picturesque forest trails because at the end of the day, the carriage would be unusable and the poor horse exhausted to death. Assuming you can read, the postman delivers the connection with the world outside your village: newspapers with the latest information about last week’s local market beer robbery and illustrated stories of adventurer Cook reaching the coast of a mysterious land called Terra Australis previous winter. During the approximately 60 years you live, you can see a handful of ground-breaking inventions, such as a cotton gin which separates cotton seeds from fibres mechanically.

That’s slow. Tedious, dulling slow. Changes and shifts took centuries to appear. Dreams built into this reality so slowly that a lifetime wasn’t enough to see them materialising. Paths confirmed once locked the destiny of generations.

The speed of our time has challenging side effects, but it’s still a huge blessing. We’ve never been as free to choose, and the fastness can support our varying passions, and enthusiasm branching into different directions.

If the definition of work is carrying dreams in a bridge between visible and invisible, speed in the balanced form is an assistant you’d like to have by your side.

As we walk on in 2025, I wish you all the colours, the slow shades and the fast tones. I wish you easy breaths and excitement.

xo, Elina

Ps. If you’d like to have some help with carrying the crap out of your inner house or bringing dreams into reality, I’m at your service. You can discuss the details and book your coaching spot via email: elina@elinah.studio.