I’ve been going down the rabbit hole on books about heroes who love independence, endurance, staying close to nature and living a slower life at a time where it’s ever so easy to rush through the precious moments of a human day.
I’ll share the books I’ve been consuming in a future message yet I also need to mention that I’ve watched some marvellous movies recently on this theme, films like Train Dreams and The Eight Mountains and Living and Perfect Days.
Oh how these movies (and books) have influenced me, and caused me to rethink the way I create, produce and live.
Perfect Days is a special one. The hero is a Japanese toilet cleaner who works with mastery, taking great pride in his skill, his integrity—and his very clean results.
He also loves spending his lunchtimes studying the sunlight bending through trees (beautiful right?), having conversations with interesting strangers on park benches and savoring the simple gifts available to each of us (yet missed by most of us). He lives in an austere apartment, reads the classics and is happy with little, and living by his own definition of winning.
I sense that if I (or we) walked through a park with him, he’d speak softly and he’d think deeply and we’d walk slowly.
I was in South Africa in July and while on retreat, I made it my practice to walk the long road to the town slowly. I usually walk fast. Through airports on the way to deliver keynote addresses. Through cities en route to meetings or media appearances. Through productive hours, trying to get things done in the spirit of service.
But yes, Test, I challenged myself to walk slowly.
…To see the sunlight bending through the ancient trees.
…To stop and watch a butterfly move through a wall of colorful flowers.
…To smile at a fellow walker as the morning mist lifted from the slightly snow-capped mountains.
It helped me a lot. And I encourage the same practice for you.
The philosopher Henry David Thoreau has written:
“I think that I cannot preserve my health and spirits unless I spend four hours a day at least sauntering through the woods and over the hills and fields, absolutely free from all worldly engagements.” [I agree four hours is a long walk].
The hero of my new book The Robot and the Gardener (available worldwide in February) also walks slowly. He’s the caretaker of a cemetery. He’s learned a lot about life from the dead. And he does things less with speed and more with care, attention and love.
I think you’ll find the Gardener fascinating: part hermit, part sage, part fully human being in an artificial age.
As things become more mechanical and technological perhaps the solution for our artistry, happiness and lasting inner peace is to return to the very pursuits that make us most human.
Walking (slowly, and ideally in nature) is—in my books—one of them.
Sending you all great wishes for your leadership, mastery and fullest humanity.
Robin
