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One of the words that seems so very negative – that word, rhyming with ‘grow’, but which usually does not bode well for the noun or verb it describes. Slow. How many times have we heard it being said with a sad, sympathetic cluck of the tongue? “Oh, she’s a little slow.” “My father’s a little slow on his feet these days.” “I thought the monsoon would arrive on time, but it’s a little slow.”
Why am I thinking about this word now? As I age, it has, rather suddenly, started being applied to me. I walked back home with my granddaughter from school, and the next day she told her mother and me that she would prefer to walk by herself. Later, not knowing that I was listening, she said, “She’s so slow!” I had not thought about my rate of progress, and I knew (of course) that I was stopping only to admire and click the various flowers in people’s gardens. Otherwise (of course) I would have kept up with her! Oh well, honesty soon prevailed, and I accepted my “slow” prefix. It applies to several other activities of mine, too.
On my nature walks, we see a bird in the air or on a tree. By the time I lift my camera and focus, the big bird is gone. But not before my—obviously, younger—fellow walkers have taken several shots compared to my single one of the branch, or the sky, where the bird had been!
My daughter, too, unconsciously branded her elderly uncle. They climbed a mountain together recently, and I heard her telling several people that her uncle (a seasoned mountaineer, with Everest Base Camp and Mont Blanc under his belt!) was “a little slow during the ascent.” ‘Ayyayyo’, I thought, ‘slow happens to all of us.’
I am now trying to find positive shades to this word. And I have, indeed, found a few. “Slow to anger.” “Slow to decay”. “Slowly simmer.”
Ancient storytellers like Aesop also help me out. I can add a few more words and get a whole nice sentence: “...and steady wins the race.” (Don’t ask me which race I have won by being slow and/or steady.) Aha! Such phrases put fresh heart into my slow soul, and, slowly, a smile spreads across my face. I look up while I walk, read the road sign that says, “Go Slow,” and I nod my head in agreement. I am not a ‘Rushian’! Slow is now my preferred speed, in the evening of my life, and the slow relishing of daily moments brings me the joy of savoured pleasures. Only slow people can stop to smell the roses!