Sunday Reflections
Every morning now, after meditation, my gratitude list and a made bed, I pick up a broom. We have a robot cleaner and a vacuum, both built to save me time, yet I choose the broom anyway. I first saw this kind of sweeping on temple grounds, where monks move across the stone in long, unhurried strokes, as if the sweeping were the point and the clean floor only a gift left behind.
Sweeping is how I practise slowness in a world that arrives at record speed, and nowhere faster than here in Korea. Sweep by sweep, I’m building a muscle I’ve rarely used, the one that lets me slow down long enough to notice small things.
I’ve spent most of my life in love with efficiency. Some of it was deeply ingrained during my first twenty years growing up in Korea, and some came from my own hunger to do more and do it faster. Productivity sat at the centre of who I was. For years I held that standard up for others too, in my career and in my coaching, and I encouraged them to reach for it.
So, there is a small rebellion in this broom, a gentle turning against my own nature.
A dear friend on this island decided, when she turned fifty, to start using her left hand. She wanted to challenge herself in a new way, and perhaps to see the world from a different angle. When she shared her story, I admired her left-handed rebellion. Now I’m walking my own version of the same path.
I think of the handyman who reaches for his hammer, whatever the job. Some things truly need a hammer, but so much of life asks for a softer tool. I’ve begun to wonder what I might have missed all those years, with one tool in my hand and one pace in my step.
My life is simpler now, my aspirations vastly different, and I can afford to slow down. In return, slowness has given me gifts that efficiency never could.
On my walks I stop for a wild cat that shows no interest in me at all, and I linger anyway. It feels foreign to me, and it nourishes my soul. For someone like me, this is new territory.
I stop for strangers on the trails, too, and I reach for a connection, however brief. It isn’t because we share a future. It’s because we share our today. In those moments I remember that I’m woven into this wide universe, one hello at a time.
I’m learning that speed isn’t always the right tool. Some moments call for a broom.
In the hurry of your days, what might be passing you by?
