Slow Down, Baby

Dear Friend,

A truth that should be universally known and acknowledged (yes, this is a Jane Austen reference) is that the “greatest” anything, took time to germinate and become itself, before fully blooming. Yet, many of us still expect instant rewards. We are demanded this in work and as I’ve heard through personal stories recently, in love. I've been catching up with social circles of various age groups this last month and have heard many unenviable dating stories and the demands of careless men.

Why does everything have to move so fast? Why do we demand so much of this immediacy from one another? Why do we demand it of ourselves?

Earlier in the week, I signed up to join my friend, M and his boyfriend for the Singapore premiere of a Lebanese movie called, Arzé. I can’t recall the last time I felt a kinship and connection for someone’s first feature film like that. The director, Mira Shaib and all the crew poured their hearts into it. You could feel it. After the screening, there was a virtual Q&A with her and she was asked about her process and how long it took to make the film. When I heard her answer, I may have audibly gasped. Six years, she said. This felt true. Everything in nature takes time. There aren't many things that naturally move "fast" and the things that do, like light, is our limit.

I only started to slow down again in the last week so mind you in the movie theatre, I was in a headspace that expected the director to say it took her 1-2 years or a similarly hurried timeline. So when she said six, I felt my soul called to the present—to come back to my body, in my seat in the theatre, to savour the shared experience with fellow moviegoers. It was a heartwarming film but also one that was unafraid to include Beirut's political and cultural realities. Of course, it took six whole years. This fact of time, also ties into the film itself. The protagonist, Arzé, is a mother and a baker. She dedicated many years of her life to raising her son and perfecting the recipe of her beloved pies.

These reminders of time and care, made me think about how if we are truly invested in this path of healing, or being awakened, or simply put, “being better people”, that nothing sustainable will come out of impulsivity or recklessness. I say this with a knowing. I have stories. Though perhaps, it is more apt to call them parables.

Here I am again. In the home I’ve made. Introspecting on a weekend. I can’t believe it sometimes. I made it to 37. With an apartment I can call home. Living a Carrie-like existence (quietly writing into the night, minus the wild dating life)—it doesn’t matter that I’m not in New York City. It was never meant to be mine. And even when I fell in love with it very briefly in 2022—it didn’t feel like home.

I know I have done this before, fawning and squeeing over my studio in Singapore, but it took me time to get here too. How little I am resting and how I am not ticking off items on my main to-do list, are evidence that I've veered off my main path. It's okay. Tomorrow's a new day, and still, my inner child would be so proud.

It’s been challenging to find quiet and refuge in the last few months, because a) I hadn’t had the time (quick side-story: because I did the thing I told myself I wasn’t going to do and once again, took on work that I knew was going to take a toll on my body), but also b) the construction across from my window continues, so even on Saturday it's sensible for me to spend most of the day outside and not cocooning away like my body would prefer.

I have been so in the thick of things economically and socially, that this Saturday, in spite of the noise, for the first time since embarking on this new life—cocoon I did. This is the first weekend where, fatigue aside, I feel my spirit returning to my body. It is such a specific feeling: the recognition of the need to slow down, and then there's actually doing it. Here's to listening to my body again.

with love and slow gestures,
cat