4 Reasons to Slow Down in a Busy World

It feels like there are endless possibilities we can do each day: Friends to talk to, places to go, things to read, work to be done, and games to play. The Internet alone has what feels like an endless number of webpages with a variety of content: videos, images, drawings, and words.

The result of this causes many people to spend seconds here and there and not really truly focus much on anything. You may have had a conversation with someone that when it started you sort of knew the person was already thinking about the next thing they wanted to do and any moment would break away to it. In order to do it all, that person felt like that was needed.

There are a number of reasons to try to slow down in this world—to pick a small amount of things to do in what seems like a sea of possibilities. Before I get into the reasons, I want to mention a possible cause that might help: Pride is sneaky, and it may take the form of thinking that we can do everything. A big problem in thinking we can, or even should, do everything is that we feel awful because we end up not being able to. The reason is we can't humanly do everything, but pride tries not to show us that.

Here are the reasons to slow down. Slowing down will help the following happen:

1. Relationships. The example I mentioned above shows the issue with going too fast or being too busy doing everything. There's no way to truly get to know and have deep relationships with people if we are always running to the next thing without taking as much time as is needed or it takes to finish a full, good conversation. Of course, along with relationships with people, this principle applies to our relationship with God too.

2. Enjoyment in God's creation/gifts to us. When we have time to focus on things, we see the beauty and beautiful complexity of things. Like simply taking a walk through a forest preserve.

3. Thinking and reflecting. With so much information everywhere, if we never take time to think and reflect on it, we'll never be able to truly process it all and think through what we think about it. We need to be careful and think through how what we do and what we've read all relates to our faith and what matters. Otherwise we might be running around doing things that aren't really worthwhile.

4. Creativity. When we allow more space and time in our schedule we might come up with interesting ideas and things to create and do that we wouldn't have otherwise.