Slow living — I don’t want it. But I don’t want fast either.

This letter doesn’t light candles or build an ideal life.

This is an answer to the letter I got from my friend Janina last week with intriguing questions about slow living. She asked, what thoughts does slow living spark in me and is slow living something worth striving for. If you haven’t yet, you can read Janina’s letter here.

Ha! I definitely have an opinion or two about this topic!

Kuhmo, 8 April 2025

Hi Janina,

Thank you for your letter. Ah, slow living! Such a topic!

Briefly put, no, I don’t strive for a slow life in any form. Or a fast one, either.

The ethos of slow living is interesting. There are about 537 million tea cup pics in social media posts tagged as #slowliving, but what does the term even mean beyond vague phrases like living your passion or clichés like burning candles in the autumn evenings?

Does going for a run prevent slow living since running isn’t slow? Or is it? What if you first run and then lie in a hammock—which is your life, slow or fast? What if you enjoy running your artisan pizza restaurant, renovating, or rally driving and don’t get pleasure from watching steam (except in the sauna)? Is slow living yet another religion, predicting you to be doomed if you enjoy drive and excitement? A romanticised longing for old and long-gone days of predictability?

If only I had time, is, of course, a universally common wish. I don’t believe there’s anyone who hasn’t gotten entangled in time’s gravity, in that pull with which time carries us.

An insane number of people spend their days rushing from one meaningless task to another, from one fast meal of productivity to another.

It’s hellish to realise that life went by, disappeared, got lost in the chase of more. Years passed without leaving an experience, muscle memory, skill, story.

I totally understand the longing for a life that makes you smile and doesn’t feel like eating cold, clumpy oatmeal you can barely swallow for breakfast, lunch, and supper. (Can anything you can barely swallow be healthy?)

In your letter, you wrote: “But to be honest, looking back, my pursuit of slow living − and my success in achieving it − has been a strong reaction against the highly performance-driven and fast-paced life I lived as a young person and young adult. Against the performance-driven and fast-paced person I was.”

I completely agree with you.

If your reflection in the mirror resembles a hyperventilating squirrel, it’s time to slow down before you crash into a trunk of Picea Abies.

If you’ve been overstimulating your nervous system for long, hustling, tightening your head into brain fog, fussing with details, and performing, I’d advise you to stop, listen, feel, slow down. Balancing might require the opposite extreme—physically and mentally—perhaps for a long time.

Still, it’s just one aspect in a multidirectional weave called life, which is never a single specific thing moving along a linear continuum.

I don’t believe in any stable state and form of being.

The only permanent, immobile, and steadfast is within us, but that essence is beyond words, and around this core, life dances waltz, salsa, and breakdance, never completely stopping.

There’s a difference between living in a way that feels good, authentic, and right for yourself and sticking better-worse labels on slow and fast.

I mean, what is this human obsession with labels? The good-bad puritanism and ridiculous attempts to control and manage life through systems? Why there must be a fucking scheme, concept, or pie chart for... well, everything?

Life’s rhythmicity varies: within a single day, there’s room for faster and slower tempo. Life stages and changes affect it. It’s natural to be seasonal. After creating comes reflecting. After resting comes action.

Nature is often linked to the pathos of slow living, which I find comical. Especially in the northern latitudes where I live, the growing season is overwhelmingly intense. Nothing could be further from slow than Nordic summertime nature. Flycatchers feed their chicks non-stop, hares make leverets like from a conveyor belt. Plants and trees push out buds, stems, leaves, flowers, cones, and fruits at a breathtaking pace. The landscape changes in days as every square centimetre pushes out green. Spring and early summer’s frenzy, singing in all musical keys, quiets down for a couple more pastel-coloured hours of the nightless night and then continues with the same roar.

Life flows through me, I don’t pass through life. This is a realisation that has changed my relationship with time perhaps the most.

Presence, meaning, and awareness don’t equal slow.

If you’ve ignored yourself, slowness helps you to recognise your suppressed needs and feelings, quiet passions, and the beauty of life. We all need times of silence, escape even.

But you don’t have to stop to be present. Awareness can exist everywhere and at every speed.

Meaning grows from the experiences—and they are never just slow.

What do you think about slow living nowadays? If your goal of slow living has fallen away, has something else taken its place?

xo Elina