The writer, historian, and activist Rebecca Solnit’s writing,
which I discovered only recently, has captivated me. But what informs her superb writing are her powers of observation and her contemplative mind. In the past few
months, I have read countless essays, reviews, and articles by her, as well as
her book of non-fiction Men Explain Things to Me. In addition, I recently started listening to
the Audible version of Wanderlust: A
History of Walking, wherein Solnit reminds us that walking is
an intellectual, spiritual, and revolutionary pursuit, as well as a creative
and empowering act. No surprise then that I
am saving (and savoring) my reading/listening of this work for my daily, long
walks. Solnit is an intellectual nomad,
however, whose interests roam far and wide.
So when I came across her Orion piece
titled Finding
Time, I was delighted to find that it dovetailed nicely with my ongoing obsession. An excerpt
from her article first:
The Four Horsemen
of my Apocalypse are called Efficiency, Convenience, Profitability, and
Security, and in their names, crimes against poetry, pleasure, sociability, and
the very largeness of the world are daily, hourly, constantly carried out.
These marauding horsemen are deployed by technophiles, advertisers, and
profiteers to assault the nameless pleasures and meanings that knit together
our lives and expand our horizons…
I believe that
slowness is an act of resistance, not because slowness is a good in itself but
because of all that it makes room for the things that don’t get measured and
can’t be bought.
For my part, I have come to the not-so-profound conclusion
that what I consider a luxury is not any pricey item, event, or trip but
rather, time. As the writer and
spiritual teacher Pico Iyer recently said in an On Being interview, “[l]uxury has to do with having a lot of
time. The ultimate luxury might now be
just a blank space in the calendar.” I
couldn’t agree more. So, in the midst of
my busy days, I eschew fast food for the luxury of slow cooked steel cut
oatmeal several mornings a week; spend extended periods of time in my kitchen,
listening to my favorite podcasts or the excellent Radio Paradise as I cook dinner from
scratch; and try, at least once a day, to pick up an intricate crochet thread
project. It’s not much, but carving out
even a couple of hours in this manner, in an otherwise hectic life, does indeed feel
luxurious.
