Activism. The word itself conjures up intense images. Fists in the air. Feet marching in unity. Maybe off the streets, it looks a little something like donning a suit to try and directly persuade lawmakers.
Either way, it’s got an intense, high-energy ring to it.
My own work in activism has long matched this tempo.
I remember the first internship I worked after graduation, advocating for refugees. I remember 14 hour workdays in an industrial garage that had been turned into an office. I remember bringing work home, my reading list full of memoirs about child trafficking and human rights. There was a buzz to it all. I found it exciting and life giving. All at an age where energy and idealism needed that sort of outlet.
A greyscale definition of the word activism simply means an organized course of action directed to achieve political or social change. And I’ve learned it can look a lot of different ways.
People can apply skills like accounting or administration to a cause, even though this doesn’t fit the immediate mental image.
People can be activists in non-work settings like parenthood or friendship.
The hundreds of farmers I’ve met over the years who teach their neighbors their favorite regenerative farming techniques? They count too.
Activism isn’t always about burning it all down. Sometimes it’s that slow, gradual chipping away at an institution so deeply normalized in our world. Maybe it’s living in a way that challenges a commonplace but harmful assumption.
After I watch a great documentary, I often find myself asking: am I really doing everything I can to stop this from being a reality in our world?
But lately, I’ve been stepping back from a lot of things and slowing way down. Partly because I’d rather not watch my kids grow up in some sort of turbo-charged warp speed while I have my hands tied up with work, and partly because at the end of last year, I felt burnout in a way I never quite had before. My trip to the Philippines and opening up to new, unplanned, unscripted space in my day has done wonders.
And while it’s looked like less activity, I’ve actually found that slow living is a great fuel for actual activism, the organized actions focused on change. Here’s how:
The Activism of Going Slow
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The Activism of Going Slow
Activism. The word itself conjures up intense images. Fists in the air. Feet marching in unity. Maybe off the streets, it looks a little something like donning a suit to try and directly persuade lawmakers.
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Either way, it’s got an intense, high-energy ring to it.
My own work in activism has long matched this tempo.
I remember the first internship I worked after graduation, advocating for refugees. I remember 14 hour workdays in an industrial garage that had been turned into an office. I remember bringing work home, my reading list full of memoirs about child trafficking and human rights. There was a buzz to it all. I found it exciting and life giving. All at an age where energy and idealism needed that sort of outlet.
A greyscale definition of the word activism simply means an organized course of action directed to achieve political or social change. And I’ve learned it can look a lot of different ways.
People can apply skills like accounting or administration to a cause, even though this doesn’t fit the immediate mental image.
People can be activists in non-work settings like parenthood or friendship.
The hundreds of farmers I’ve met over the years who teach their neighbors their favorite regenerative farming techniques? They count too.
Activism isn’t always about burning it all down. Sometimes it’s that slow, gradual chipping away at an institution so deeply normalized in our world. Maybe it’s living in a way that challenges a commonplace but harmful assumption.
After I watch a great documentary, I often find myself asking: am I really doing everything I can to stop this from being a reality in our world?
But lately, I’ve been stepping back from a lot of things and slowing way down. Partly because I’d rather not watch my kids grow up in some sort of turbo-charged warp speed while I have my hands tied up with work, and partly because at the end of last year, I felt burnout in a way I never quite had before. My trip to the Philippines and opening up to new, unplanned, unscripted space in my day has done wonders.
And while it’s looked like less activity, I’ve actually found that slow living is a great fuel for actual activism, the organized actions focused on change. Here’s how:
Slow living connects us to creation and place
I’ve learned the most from farmers, working with rural farmers the past several years has taught me the beauty, challenges, and significance of belonging to the land and having a relationship with creation.
So much of the change I’ve been working towards in these years is towards a more sustainable world, one with a healthier future than what current projections have us steering towards. And yet, it’s not just about “fixing the world,” it's about reorienting our relationship with the world.
It’s when you’re in a hurry that you get the most disconnected from your surroundings. For most of human history, we’ve lived with this consciousness that our own well-being relies on the well-being of our environment and our surroundings. It still is, but we’re far more out of touch with that awareness.
Slow living, especially when its connected to some practice that relates to caring for the earth, can root our activism in a sense of belonging.
Slow living rejects the belief that our value is in our utility
A consequence of industrialized life is that we’ve put such a strong emphasis on productivity… to the point where we associate people’s value with their ability to be productive. However, this ends up being extremely harmful for the most vulnerable members of our society.
Once you see this pattern, you see it everywhere. The way we underinvest in children’s safety. The way senior citizens often become the forgotten members of society. The lack of accessibility for people with disabilities in shared spaces, and so on. This underlying belief also manifests itself internally, as that feeling of living with a constant sense of urgency around your to do list, or staying so constantly busy as a proxy for purpose or connection.
Slow living helps us break from that constant sense of urgency. Most of what we tend to label as urgent isn’t really urgent when you look at the big picture. We often tell ourselves that because we’ve associated urgency and busyness with being important and having value.
Slow living reminds us of our limits
The thing that slow living forces us to confront is that, we’re actually not all going to get it all done today. We’re not really going to get it all done any day.
This is one of the ideas Oliver Burkeman so effectively challenged me with in his book 4,000 Weeks: Time Management for Mortals. We often fill our lives and our schedules with activity because of the fear that we’ll run out of time to do all we want, and the reality is that this is probably true. Sometimes our overscheduling woes comes from a refusal to accept that reality.
Slow living requires the acknowledgement that I’ll do what I can with the day in front of me, making the most out of each activity, and being present. When your work surrounds a cause that so badly needs to be advanced– whether that’s climate action, gun safety, or racial justice– embracing your limits reminds you that you’re not going to create this change on your own, and that it takes a community.
We need each other, and that reality frees us from the individualism and savior complex that may be side effects of our activism.
Slow living, especially in a frenetic world, can be an easily overlooked force for change. But it can help sustain us for the long haul while challenging assumptions beneath an unjust world.