‘Move slowly and mend things’: I’ve been thinking of this, on and off, all day. Last week I walked around town irradiated by unwholesome feelings. Only when I pause to consider my movements - as in yoga, or in the kitchen, to screw in a drawer pull or clean a window, I feel so much better, lighter on my feet. When moving slowly and deliberately, things acquire gravidity and concreteness. Including my body. I feel less of a wraith. What a person must do in the world: cultivate order, their sense of the world. ‘Move slowly and mend things’—advice, perhaps, for how to live a long life. A life of mercy and grace. Think of a Buddhist monk sweeping the veranda of a temple. Moving purposefully, with care. Not to act on others, but to live in harmony with others, and in nature.
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