I have been trying to pace myself for a while now. I’ve been trying to lay back and savor the moments as I have them. I read this thing the other day that asks ‘when you’re racing to the next moment, what happens to the one you’re in?’ It really stuck with me. I’ve been thinking a lot about how I’ve spent more time planning things than actually being present for them across my life, and it’s made me realize that I have to slow down.

Since then, I have found my coffee is sweeter, my days are longer, and my reads are quieter. I notice the sun when it lingers, I appreciate my cat when it curls up in my lap, I savor the fifteen extra minutes with a friend. Life elongates itself when you stop to realize just how slow all of it is. It is this false perception we’ve created for ourselves of how fast time moves that has made us believe that life is passing us by. When, in reality, it is us who are passing it by. Sometime between our childhoods and now, we have forgotten what it was to sit and marvel at the flowers on the ground beneath a tree. We have forgotten what it was to lose yourself to a game of hide and seek, or a run around the park with your friends. There’s this quote by Lao Tzu I love: “Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished”. We have gotten so caught up in ‘getting there’ that we have both lost track of where we were trying to go, and what we wanted from it as we went. But life is so beautiful when you’re slowing down. It is so soft. There are a million little gifts along the way.

I think about how we are like that with clothes as well. How we have turned a slow paced, beautiful thing into a never-ending machine. The fast paced life that we seem to have collectively fallen into has fed into this need to constantly buy. A lot of clothing has lost its artistry, and a lot of what we purchase is to feed a trend that will end in a few weeks. And then it is on to the next thing. It has become this sort of whirlwind of overproduction and waste. In slowing down, I have realized how producing clothes with trendless design adds longevity to its life. How, instead of having all of this waste, we could slow down our consumption as well. If only a little more thought goes into the purchase. I realize now that every little choice you make matters, no matter how small and inconsequential it seems.

Now, I can’t help but sit on my couch a little longer if the sun is reaching into the house. I can’t help but sit and watch when it rains, until the last drop has fallen and the sky has cleared. I can’t help but wake up every morning and dance in front of my closet before picking out what clothes will accompany me that day. I can’t help but find a vacation in every little thing I do. And it has made my life all the more full.