11 Comments
User's avatar
Tom White's avatar

There is a deep, profound wisdom in the Navy SEALs’ aphorism: “Slow is smooth and smooth is fast.”

Expand full comment
Igor's avatar

Wait, that's where it's from??? I though it was bruce lee's... Heard it in the context of learning playing card flourishes and martial arts and kept repeating it to myself for years

Expand full comment
Atmos's avatar

Funny coincidence: You published this right after I purchased the audiobook "The Practice of Groundedness" 😁 I'm a lover of slowness, but a very bad practitioner. I'm rooted in Taosim philosophically and slooowly it enters my grounded, physical presence. It takes patience to learn from impatience. Slowing down to the speed of life takes time. A path full of seemingly contractions.

Expand full comment
Greg Wheeler's avatar

Sari, how the heck do you always know what I need to hear? Reminds me of a thought I had about living life in a crockpot, not the microwave. Microwaves heat up processed food. It’s fast. Convenient. But it steals the process. Crockpots are all about the slowness. The simmering. The flavor is always better. Sure it takes more time. But it’s so worth it.

Expand full comment
Grace-Ese Atiyota's avatar

In line with my thoughts of recent. A certain patience is required for uncompromised quality in the end result of a process. I started watching a series and the chef refuses to use ingredients that are easily produced because there is a depth of flavor that the ingredients give as a result of going through certain due processes. Someone here used a crockpot and microwave analogy and it hit harder.

Expand full comment
Christina Ducruet's avatar

Fast x Slow is the defining tension of my year thus far. A genuinely hard balance to strike when the inertia of modern life is speed, efficiency, seamlessness, anti-friction, like thumbs sliding endlessly over a glassy interface, containing everything, yet touching nothing. This list reads like the formula for an antidote. Patience. Friction. Spaciousness. Duration. Sweating the Details.

Expand full comment
Kate Underwood's avatar

Beautiful. Thank you.

Expand full comment
Gavin Sher's avatar

Timeless Truth. Well put. Thanks :)

Expand full comment
Caveman 👻's avatar

i needed to read thissssssss 🥹

Expand full comment
Amber Theurer's avatar

Slowing down to speed up 🫧 yes.

Expand full comment
Ankit Shah's avatar

thank you

Expand full comment