Stop and take a moment to live fully

Imagine you are in a car going down the motorway. How much detail will you see if you are looking out through the window? How many of your senses will be active as you speed past the things around you?

Now imagine you pull into a service area. Not a rubbish strewn lay-by on the A414 (trust me, it’s not nice!) but a peaceful quiet area with lots of space and greenery. One such place is Aire de la Baie de Somme, a large service area on the A16. This unlikely sounding tonic for the soul has a nature reserve with walkways crossing streams and wetlands.

Now imagine getting out of your car and walking along those pathways or simply sitting and contemplating the streams. Listen to the breeze flowing through the tall waving grasses, watch the sunlight sparkling on the tiny ripples of water created by diving insects and smell the summery fragrance of wildflowers. How much better would you feel?

In today’s culture we like to feel busy – if we are busy we must be valued and will therefore feel more satisfied. FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out) only escalates this feeling, driving us to strive to get involved with everything possible! Yet our minds are not designed to cope with this constant onslaught of information. We need to have time to reflect and cultivate stillness in order to be at our best.

We move through life so quickly, never stopping to notice what is going on around us. Consequently we attach value to those things moving along with us at a frantic pace and fail to attach sufficient value to the slower things – a walk in nature, a meal lovingly cooked and shared with family, reading a good book or a restorative yoga practice.

What if we changed what we value? How much greater would our ideas be and how much more could we contribute to society? Movements such as Slow Food are tackling this in the food world – counteracting “the rise of fast life”. There are other organisations working to promote ethical fashion and diverse ways of working. But we shouldn’t rely on large-scale organisations for this. We can each make our own choices about how fast or slow we want to live.

So next time you feel you are rushing along the motorway of life, try pulling over into a metaphorical service area. Stop, get out of your car and start to live fully.