The slow rebellion
Who's in?
This voiceover is an audio version of the newsletter below. As always, it’s unedited so probably features some stutters and re-starts. If you like/need to listen to these posts I hope you enjoy it.
Mates, hello!
I’m so glad to have you here. It’s been a funny couple of months, but I’m back in the saddle (my trusty office chair) and ready to dive into a new term of writing.
For those of you who’ve been here a while, thank you for hanging in there with me. Your support has meant so much, and I’m not entirely sure I would have come back to this space without it.
To those who are new, welcome! I’m so so thrilled you’re here. I say it a lot (because it’s true) but this really is the best little corner of the internet. Full of good people digging in to the question of what does it mean to live slow in a fast world?
A very brief update on my health: I’m feeling pretty good. Three months on and I’ve mostly recovered from my surgery, which feels like forever, but I’m so glad I gave myself the extra time to heal. Who the hell knows what the future holds health-wise (or in any capacity, really) but for now I’m in a good place and excited to dig into a new theme for the next ten weeks.
As I mentioned back in April, this term’s theme (as always, applied loosely) is rebellious living.
When I first came across slow living in 2011, it felt rebellious. Exciting, slightly dangerous and somewhat isolating. To opt out, to choose different, to slow down in the face of ever-increasing speed was…weird. And I felt weird because of it.
Over time though, I found my people. I discovered that while we might be seen as weird by the parts of society that think slow = lazy, there were enough of us to realise we weren’t alone in wanting something different. And together, we carved out a space that felt good and right and aligned.
Since then, slow living has become less counter-cultural and more mainstream. It’s now a trend, an aesthetic, a different set of Joneses with whom we’re told to keep up with, and in many ways, it’s left a lot of us behind.
I still believe in slow living. I believe that its core tenets — slow down, learn to pay attention, work out our values and create space to live them by letting go of so much of the stuff we hold on to — are what the world needs more of. A population of people who notice and care and live intentionally could change everything.
But I think it’s become more exhausting to swim against the tide. Whether that’s because of the groupthink of social media, or because noticing more means noticing more and that can be incredibly painful, or maybe because there is simply so much more water to swim against now, I don’t know. Probably a mix of all of them.
I think many of us are acutely aware that the world needs more people living intentionally, not less. But at the same time, many of us are also suffering values fatigue. We care, so much, but my god, we’re tired.
So that’s where I’m starting this term from. A place of desire and fear. I desire ways to live more rebelliously*, but I fear the toll it can take.
*When I say live rebelliously, I’m not talking about becoming a contrarian just for the sake of it. (Now that is exhausting.) There are plenty of areas of life where I choose to follow the general direction of the status quo. We’re married, we live in a house, we have a mortgage, we have kids, we send them to public school, we buy things, we own things, we take the occasional holiday. None of those things is counter-cultural and only sets us apart by the various levels of privilege they show.
Rebellion, to me, in this instance, is deciding what you stand for and standing by it. Living your values in the face of questioning or confusion or derision, even if, or especially if, those values run counter to the norm.
And what I’m really excited to explore is the question of what happens when we do?
What happens when we explore aging, beauty, parenting, caring, health, creativity, work, social media, joy, consumerism and pleasure through that lens? What happens when we get really intentional with how we engage them (or if we decide to not engage them at all)?
I can’t wait to dig in, but I’m curious:
When you hear the term rebellious living, what do you see? What do you feel? Does it excite you? Exhaust you? Confuse you? Are there parts of life that you’re ready to rebel in? Parts that you’re afraid to? Parts that you’re happy enough with the status quo?
Before I go, a couple of quick reminders.
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And that’s it from me. I’m so glad to be back, and can’t wait to see what this term holds for us.
Until next time, take good care,
Brooke xx
I’m so glad that you’re feeling much better, Brooke! I’m excited about ‘rebellious living’ being your theme for this term. I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately. After working for the government for 15 years, I quit and went travelling for 8 months in 2019. Since then, I have worked part-time and was very influenced by the idea of slow living and The Art of Frugal Hedonism book where it talked about minimising your expenses so you could have more free time to do other things. However, I often didn’t know what to do with the extra time I had. Recently I’ve gone back to working full time which I swore I’d never do again. It felt surprisingly hard to go against the mainstream way of living and so tempting to jump back into it again. So I did, and now I’m wondering what I truly value and how I want to live my life. So very keen to explore this with you!
I'm so glad you're feeling better, Brooke. I'm not sure about the term rebellion. On the one hand I really like the idea that the lifestyle I've adopted for many years now, some of it very intentionally, some inspired by necessity, can be seen as an act of rebellion; on the other hand, I'm not sure that I have the energy to rebel any more, though in reality, I do and have done a lot of it. Perhaps it's best thought of as a quiet rebellion - every time I make my own bread or yoghurt, darn a sock instead of chucking it out, buy a garment from an opshop instead of a fast-fashion outlet, or volunteer at a repair cafe, I know that I'm swimming against the stream. Dignifying it with the term rebellion feels empowering. But there is also a cost, especially if you're doing it by yourself. It takes time and energy. This week I've spent many hours standing on a not-quite-healed sprained ankle to process the apples, pears, quinces, medlars and grapes that come out of my garden, and I'm not sure that I'd be doing it if it weren't an economic necessity. I'm reminded that passive resistance can sometimes mean lying down in the path of the bulldozer. :)