Slow Horses

When my family started building in the outskirts of Harare, for me everything felt unreal. The possibility of staying far from everything I was used to made no sense. I couldn’t comprehend it. Certainly, there must’ve been a mistake somewhere. Visits to the site felt like road trips, being at the place, its bare landscape before us felt like we would never get anything out of it. The simple presence of somewhat a house, let alone a home was a concept I didn’t appreciate. I’d become so used to the fast, ready-made city life that slowing down and appreciating beginnings didn’t look any attractive to my soul.

At this point, I couldn’t move forward because I got too comfortable where I was for too long. I had to be pushed into the unknown.

My sister decided to move us into the new house before it was complete. The whole time I thought she shared similar sentiments. Now I look back and see how we reached a point not of complete acceptance, but of appreciation of this new environment. Shaping up in accustoming ourselves to a new reality was only one step. Slowing down and getting to notice different ideas we hadn’t put much thought into or appreciated is a journey we are called upon to this day.

Being far from the center of a busy city forced me to slow down. In slowing down, I started noticing, appreciating and getting meaning from a plethora of life‘s aspects that had been all too swift for me to take hold of. It took me a particular slowness to notice things, not the conscious type, but the organic, more unorthodox slowness that came when I was not necessarily looking.

When I slowed down, I noticed how beautiful waking up in the morning was. The feeling of starting a new day, being in control of some breaths, and just routinely easing into the day escalated my gratitude. The mornings in our new home were quite chilly, but they gave balance to my energy just enough to get me out of bed. The birdsong outside came as something new, the harmony of the song, beautiful with no chorus made nature a good rule breaker and fantastic inspiration for the start of anything. Harmony start can be the key to order, and without some structure, a day can go to waste. Only when I slowed down I started noticing and even became somewhat grateful for mornings. Mornings are not different in the city. I just never slowed down to see, even if I experienced them, sometimes I never observed how they affected me.

I slowed down my runs. This didn’t affect my times at all. By now, these two statements sound contradictory. I never slowed down, I consider myself a high-performance athlete. I just slowed down the experience. I paused listening to other people’s experiences while I was on my endeavor and started listening to my feet striking the ground. For every 5 km run, I got 25 minutes of meditation. The 10 km? Close to an hour. This means taking away the conversations I had; my half marathon was almost 2 hours of meditation and self-conversation. I noticed in this dialed-down, running that I have the ability to positively converse with myself, and also the ability to put myself down if I allow it. I realized every step is a choice, and its execution is an entire process. Stepping forward is no mundane activity. Machines have nothing on us. I realize the world is full of wonders, although the biggest ones are those we choose to acknowledge. Because my runs usually circuit a residential area, and I try to maintain a consistent pace, some people come across me twice. For them, I might just seem like some fast runner, but to meet they’re markers of the contrast between moving fast and slow. Perspective comes into play and how we experience the encounters with each other, inspiring or not, the slowness of how we manage to engage signifies a greater part of our purpose and how we progress. The fast runner can live slower than the slow walker. There are many pedestrians in the city.

Six months ago, I made two lists, one about the things I hate about myself and the other about the things I love about myself. The former seems very punishing in today’s world where we are supposed to be ‘positive’ about everything, especially ourselves and our flaws. There was a need to slow down the things I could change, write them down, and hopefully, find some guidance on tackling them. I’ve knocked down a good part of that list and it’s like rising from the ashes. I can’t feel a certain way all at once because it’s mainly comprised of minute things that not only needed slamming the brakes hard but also constantly moving at a slow pace just to properly digest all Avenues.

On the list of things I love about myself, I noticed the way I wrote about people. I called my loved ones supportive and kind. I called my chosen one pure-souled and majestic. These aren’t traits I’d use to exhaust the nature of these people, but they were gifts my slow lens had given me, a viewpoint I chose and stayed on for as long as I liked because slowing down gave me options as well. All I needed was to choose wisely.

When I slow down in conversation, I realize I never want to lie again. Choosing to play the game of a truthful individual and then proceeding to cheat at the game is what makes the wisest men appear like fools. The habits we fall into are the holes we dig for ourselves, and the most important way of connecting is conversation. There is always an abundant need to refrain from saying that which we know to not be true. But most of us are so fast in trying to convince others we are right that we never see how deep our graves have become. It’s easy to get tunnel vision and see where we want to take conversations, sometimes, looking to the side to see if we’re guiding others the right way completely misses us. So, slow down and make the journey from mind to mouth slower, then allow the truth to reach the mouth first before you destroy entire empires with the wrong words, trying to sound right.

My family moved to a place where it would be suitable to race horses, but after time, slowing the horses down and using them to just appreciate the landscape wouldn’t be such a bad idea. In this state, there are so many avenues we can open up and explore. The process and journey mean more than the destination, so not being caught up in the idea of the destination and slowing down seems only right, there is beauty in madness, just frame it down.