Have you ever been told not to dawdle and to hurry up?

We now need to learn how slow down in a hurried world.

Doodling derives from the word dawdling, connecting slow images and slow walking.

There are many forms of slow walking.  In his book The Lost Art of Walking, Geoff Nicholson introduces his readers to many of the words and terms we have for walking.  You may have strolled or pottered, and sometimes tottered,   Sometimes we shuffle, mooch, saunter and, when we have time, meander.  Rambling, gambolling, and, dare we admit, shambling have expressed our feelings.  Hopefully we haven’t needed to tell someone to take a hike but perhaps someones has told you to do this, and so you have trudged, tramped, or slogged off.

And, of course, now you’re trying out wandering.

We slow down to be able to notice more, to be present to who we are and where we are.  In Mindfulness we slow down to be present to our bodies and breathing, avoiding being captured and carried away by a thought.  In mindful dawdling, though, following a thought or an idea wherever it will take us is what we want to do.

Philosopher on randomness Nassim Taleb introduced me to the term flaneur (female: flaneuse) for someone who idles and wanders, observing the world around them.  I had opportunity recently to do just this at the end of a work trip to Washington D.C.  For two days, I wandered and observed what was for me a new place.  I found myself thinking about how flanering can be about much more than noticing things and I am now flanering as a way to see more, feel more, towards doing more.  SLOW JOURNEYS IN THE SAME DIRECTION is a means of flanering with purpose, your purpose.

We’re always thinking, taking in information from the world around us and thinking about it.  What we often think of as thinking is really thinking about what we’re thinking, so we’ll be noticing what we’re noticing, and wondering what this is saying to us.

SOMETHING TO DO: You may like to furnish yourself with a notebook that has plain pages.  When you have an idea that you want to think about, jot it down, using illustrations and arrows as well as words – a way for journalling your slow journey.

RESOURCES YOU MAY ENJOY:
The Naked Now by Richard Rohr
Paris Review article: Radical Flânueserie