I love snow days. For me, they are the best part of winter. They are days when you get to stay in your cozy home with your loved ones (if you are lucky). They are days when you are forced to press the pause button, to take the day off, to slow down, and to just be.
The snow is so pretty as it falls. It is quiet. It is soft. It is a day when I feel like the weather is telling me to snuggle under a blanket with a book or a pen and paper (or all three). The day is calling to me read and to write.
The day is whispering to me to slow down...something that I have always struggled with. My mind is always busy (so busy), running on and on about all the things I need to do that I rarely take in the moments fully and completely. I have been working on this. So much of what I am reading right now talks about how slowing down is mandatory when it comes to taking care of your soul.
I want to share some of my favorite excerpts about slowing down from some of the books I am reading:
In Shauna Niequists's Present Over Perfect, she writes:
"Here's what I know: I thought the doing and the busyness would keep me safe. They
keep me numb. Which is not the same as safe, which isn't even the greatest thing to
aspire to," (p. 61).
My busy mind numbs me. It prevents me from truly experiencing and feeling the moments in my life, and although that can be incredibly convenient when I am trying to protect myself from hurt or stress or trying to push something that make me feel bad out of my mind, it also numbs me from the good stuff too. It is tremendously difficult (impossible actually) to feel pure joy and gratitude when I am not present and when I am numb from a busy mind.
This busyness also creates an automatic response within me that leads me do things without even thinking and leaves me forgetting the things that I do. Do you know how many times I lose my keys when I am in this auto-response mode or how many times I turn around when I'm driving because I can't remember if I turned off the stove or unplugged my flat iron? I am not paying attention to my life as I live it.
Mark Nepo captures this sentiment perfectly in The Book of Awakening (a book that I have been reading every morning). He writes:
"Well, it is no secret that slowness remembers and hurry forgets; that softness remembers
and hardness forgets; that surrender remembers and fear forgets," (p. 22).
Yes, hurry forgets. I hurry so often, and so I forget too much. I forget what I've done and what I need to do. I forget what I love to do. I forget what lifts me up. I forget who I am. Slowness remembers. Slow down. Feel. Remember. Pay attention to the moments because these are the moments of my life, and life is so very short. Take it all in. Slow down.
In Baron Baptiste's 40 Days to Personal Revolution, he describes how you know when you are not centered in your life:
"You are not yet living from your center, because you have no awareness of what is
right in front of you. You are not present in your everyday activities and that is what
it means to live meditatively -- you must learn to have your feet on the ground...We
think that life is a distraction from mediation, but really, life is an occasion for
meditation," (p. 178).
As someone who has always struggled with meditation, it is no wonder that I have such difficulty being present. But I am trying. I am trying to bring myself back to the moments when my mind wanders because let's face it, my mind will always wander. That's what the human mind does. But noticing when it happens and bringing my mind back to the present moment rather than letting my mind spend hours of my day in another time and place is a step in the right direction.
Slowing down plays a huge part in taking in these moments. It's like when you eat too fast that you don't even taste your food. If I spend my day rushing, I don't feel the experiences of the day. A snow day is a wonderful reminder to slow down and be still.
Here is another beautiful excerpt from Nepo about the joy of living slowly:
"Live slow enough and there is only the beginning of time...Follow anything in its
act of being -- a snowflake falling, ice melting, a loved one waking -- and we are
ushered into the ongoing moment of the beginning, the quiet instant from which
each breath starts...this moment continually releases the freshness of living. The
key to finding this moment and all its freshness, again and again, is slowing
down," (p. 39).
There is so much beauty in this life, and when we hurry all the time, we miss it. I don't want to miss it anymore.
On Wednesday, we received the gift of a snow day. Everywhere the three of us needed to be was closed, so we just got to be home together. It was a day when we got to slow down for a little while...sleep in, eat yummy food, play in the snow, catch snowflakes, visit with neighbors, and roast marshmallows over a fire. We had nowhere else to be and no place to go. We were exactly where we needed to be. And that day, we lived slowly. It was such a lovely day.
I will end with one last quote from Niequist:
"Be still and know. Be still. Be. It starts with 'be.' Just be, dear one," (p. 91).
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