Being with others
I've been reading Seneca lately and saw the following in his Letters: "Spend your time with those who will improve you; extend a welcome to those you can improve". It resonated deeply with me. When I contemplate the shortness of life and a natural desire to live a good life, I ask myself where I want to direct my energy and how I want to spend my time. I think it has so much to do with living a more sustainable (in many senses) life too: focusing on the essentials and disinviting what is not central to a good life. During my many years in academia, I've observed that very often fellow humans associate improvement with more formal learning and progress. Yet, when I ask myself who these others contributing to my improvement are, I think of non-humans, elderly persons, children, and even those long gone (such as Seneca). I spend much time with non-humans such as stones, trees, the sea and observing animals. They hold powerful reminders of what truly matters in life and of life's essentials. I experience self-transcendence when I'm with the sea and feel encouraged to continue on my minimalist path when I see birds and squirrels. Even when I am at home, I am still with non-humans. What is my tea if not the magical leaves of camellia sinensis (and embodied human labour too)? My table is an embodied tree. Elderly persons remember how things used to be before social media platforms, influencer marketing, and smartphones. Many of the elderly persons I've met practise sustainability in various ways, such as honouring items for many years, repairing, and avoiding fast fashion. The elderly persons I'm thinking about as I'm writing these words made their home into a hub for the family to come together, and for different generations to connect and receive support and advice. I learn so much from children too. It's wonderful to observe how they take their time and persevere in learning. How they try again. One of my dreams is to write an autoethnography of slow, simple, minimalist parenting. It feels wonderful to lose track of the time while being with the words of persons from the past. I think that seeing those authors as fellow others connects us to previous generations and humanity's wisdom. Spending much time with those different others, for me, is an important part of slow living. A reviewer of my autoethnographic work once implied that slow living comes across as doing less of my own job. But what is our job? Some time ago I came to the realisation that whatever one's formal job is, the main career of a human being is being (and constantly becoming) human, in the most humanist sense of this word. Becoming a being capable of kindness, compassion, care, love, self-transcendence. Slowing down and learning from different beings and in different spaces supports me on this path.