The how and why of 'Slow Life'

Social media users have been promoting the “slow life” concept for a while. One thing you need to do to better embrace this concept, rather ironically, is turn off social media as much as you can.
      When you pay more attention to things “closer” to you, the rest, they say, will pretty much take care of itself. When you turn away from temptation, which is abundant on social media, you may have won half the battle.
The question is, how? Social media has been pervading many aspects of day-to-day life. Latest figures show that of the nearly 40 million Facebook accounts in Thailand, some 33 million are being accessed on smart phones.
That simply means social media users are following people closely everywhere they go. All the time people see what other people have, where they have been, and how much fun they are having. Social media can make people feel discontented with what we have – and they want more.
As we can see, promoting a slow life on social media is a questionable fad that in many cases is intended to make others feel dissatisfied with what they have. A slow life is not working less and travelling more.
A slow life is truly knowing your priorities and rethinking the definition of your own happiness. A slow life is caring less about money and being happy with what you already have.
The trick is that you must never compare yourself with others. Each person has his or her own slow life. All slow lives are different.
To some, spending more time with family is the top priority. To others, reading more and travelling less may constitute to a slow life. It’s not a slow life if you travel more, work less and have one eye on how many countries others have been to.
There are a thousand things we want to do. If we know we can’t do them all but still try doing them all, it’s not a slow life. But the slow life concept is not anti-progress. It’s about finding the right balance.
It promotes the idea that, in today’s world, many people are like war-horses with the sides of their eyes blocked so they can see only what’s in front of them. The horses may charge ahead and achieve something finally, but they never know what they miss out on along the way.
Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans, John Lennon said. The thinker, artist and songwriter told us to live more in the present and be less worried about the future.
Lord Buddha said the same thing more or less. He emphasised staying content and conscious in the present, a teaching mistaken by many as anti-evolution. Buddhism’s key principle is simply not seeking things that we don’t really need.
It’s human nature to “compare”. On the plus side, this trait has given birth to inventions and led to academic or sporting excellence. But comparing also can cause problems. However, whereas the virtues and shortcomings of doing this is debatable, the merits of having the right balance is undisputed.
Humans are wanderers and explorers, Carl Sagan, another great thinker, said. One may argue that he was an anti-slow life man. His real thinking, though, was against misguided competition, which he said led to prejudices, fervent hatred and all kinds of worldly problems. He promoted true compassion and true unity, which is all but impossible to achieve if we don’t slow ourselves down considerably.