La Voz de Galicia – November 4, 2022 →
I don’t know at what moment I made the decision to stop being in a hurry. What I do know is that even though I had wanted to do it for years, it seemed as if I were not in enough of a hurry to leave rushing aside…The inertia of a life that took me to sites, places, and people who contributed much and made me learn made up for the feeling that living so fast did not make sense. And the notion of financial survival always superseded vital or existential survival–until my mind said enough and stopped me suddenly, so suddenly that I didn’t know what was even happening. And now, looking back, I am aware that I have spent three years learning to live without haste, trying to be in the world in a responsible way and learning again what the verb «to be» means.
These days, while I read Fragile: Letters on Anxiety and Hope in a New Culture («Frágiles. Cartas sobre la ansiedad y la esperanza en la nueva cultura») written by the researcher of the Institute of Philosophy at the Superior Council of Scientific Research (CSIC), Remedios Zafra, I could not stop pondering on her thoughts about a so-called work-life, autoexploitation, hiperproductivity, and labor precariousness. But above all, I have been thinking about the notion of what it means to hold close slowness because over these three years, while I was adapting to the life I felt I should have been constructing, I also saw that the only way of getting from under the shadow over me was slowing down. Any imposition of haste or urgency made me return to the unstable situation where I was unable to sleep or eat. And even though I did not know Zafra’s work until a few months ago, the truth is that I feel that her Letters are written for me, for that anonymous «me» that feels herself represented by those encouraging words towards a slow and real life.
