THE ART OF SLOW LIVING
- ARTISTIC HUB MAGAZINE
- May 7
- 3 min read
Updated: May 13
A Silence That Doesn’t Compete
Sometimes, life becomes clearer not by adding more but by letting go. In a world ruled by deadlines, noise and constant updates, some quietly choose another path. They’re not falling behind. They’re stepping aside, deliberately.
It’s not laziness. It’s a stance. A quiet way of living, not performed but felt.
They call it slow living. And while the name whispers, the shift it brings is unmistakable.
It began in Rome in the 1980s. Carlo Petrini, disturbed by what speed does to meaning, stood in front of the first McDonald’s in Italy and offered a plate of pasta. That moment became slow food. It was a response, not a trend. From it grew a different kind of rhythm: cities that breathe, breakfasts without screens, art made without clocks.
Slowness is no longer a retreat. It’s a decision. In Praise of Slowness, Carl Honoré calls it a new kind of wealth. Not something you buy, but something you choose.
“When we rush, we stop seeing.”
At the core of slow living is not time but attention. It’s not about doing less. It’s about being fully there. Letting mornings become moments, not just transitions between tasks.
Every day, people share ( #slowmorning ) glimpses of that choice. A coffee not grabbed but held. Not drunk in motion but savored in stillness. No noise. No feed. Just one warm cup, made by hand. It’s not for show. It’s for presence.
In Japan, it’s called wabi-sabi, the quiet beauty of what fades. In Denmark, hygge. In Italy, dolce far niente. Every culture has its own word for it, the urge to pause instead of perform. It doesn’t live in apps. It lives in habits.
One meal. One cup. One hour in silence. Not luxury. Just attention, returned.
More and more artists, designers and architects are building lives around rhythm instead of rush. Brooke McAlary, author of Slow, left the city after burnout and began again. She moved closer to the land and closer to her breath. She writes to remind us that life isn’t a race. It’s shaped by small, steady moments.
Carl Honoré sees it the same way. He doesn’t speak about slowness but awareness. Not about stepping back but tuning in. In his books and talks, he shares a different kind of revolution that begins with how we move through a single day.
Céline Semaan sees this in fashion, in justice, in the planet. Through her work at The Slow Factory, she shows that slowing down is also a form of care. Not just for ourselves, but for each other and the world around us.
Slow living isn’t about retreat. It’s about how. How we speak. How we move. How we notice. Whether we truly hear someone. Whether we feel our own breath.
In a culture obsessed with faster and louder, this is not a fix. It’s a pause. A space. It doesn’t promise clarity. It simply says be here. Let that be enough.
Living slowly doesn’t mean being late. It means arriving, fully.
And that’s why more and more people who create are turning to it. They choose depth over speed. Feeling over noise. Meaning over display. They let silence speak. They know how to say this is enough.
This is not nostalgia. It’s not about avoiding tech. It’s a reminder that stillness can exist even in the middle of everything. Quiet has a scent. Breakfast can be a ritual, not a blur. One steady breath can shift a day.
In a world that wants to be heard, slow living invites us to listen. To ourselves. To others. To the wind through a half-open window. That’s where art begins. Not the kind you frame. The kind you live.
And if we ever forget how to breathe, maybe we’ll remember in a moment like this. Inhale. Exhale. Slowly. Then again. And only then, begin.
