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Today, on a walk, I stopped to study the pink-tinged leaves of a Korean dogwood tree and gave myself a pat on the back. <\/p>\n
When the year began, I set a goal for myself to slow down. We\u2019re halfway through the year and, to be completely honest, I\u2019d give myself a C or a C-. I\u2019m making progress, like stopping at a dogwood tree, but it\u2019s harder than I expected. <\/p>\n
At the beginning of the year, I started with the easy stuff: slowing down while driving, slowing down while shopping in the grocery store, and slowing down when I prep for the day. Then, I began to slow down on my walks: I saw flattened squirrels, hawk feathers, and today I stopped to study dogwood leaves.<\/p>\n
And there\u2019s more that gives me hope.<\/p>\n
Thanks to a clever man in the U.K. and to Leo Tolstoy, I\u2019m crushing the idea of \u201cslowing down\u201d in another small part of my life. Yes, that Leo Tolstoy, author of War and Peace. <\/em> <\/p>\n I discovered \u201cslow reading\u201d through Simon Haisell’s Slow Read<\/a> on Substack. Haisell is a British wizard at reading big books slowly (War and Peace, Wolf Hall<\/em>), and he\u2019s found an engaging way to bring hundreds of readers together to do it.<\/p>\n Haisell has set up a schedule\u2014basically a chapter a day\u2014for us to read War and Peace <\/em>throughout 2026. He makes comments, asks questions, adds quirky and interesting backstory on history, people, the arts, and more, and then opens the discussion. Readers from around the world (apparently, there is someone from Antarctica) offer comments, which are thoughtful, polite, and intriguingly diverse. <\/p>\n This slow reading process has been a gift in several ways. <\/p>\n I slow down for small chunks of time<\/strong><\/p>\n First, it supports my goal of slowing down. I take ten minutes each morning, read Simon\u2019s comments, Tolstoy\u2019s chapter, and the readers\u2019 comments. I love the ritual, the pace, and the short task in a doable amount of time. I miss it when I\u2019m unable to read and am anxious<\/a> to return to the routine (when I travel, carrying a 1000+ page book is a bit much, and the Kindle version just doesn\u2019t cut it). Because I read only a few pages at a time, I take the time to stop, reread, think, mark up, note down, and shake my head. <\/p>\n I appreciate the magic of Tolstoy\u2019s writing<\/strong><\/p>\n I knew Leo Tolstoy was a great writer, but this slow reading has helped me understand why. He\u2019s a master in description and understands humans and relationships: men and women, fathers and daughters or sons, leaders and followers. Even though he\u2019s writing about Russia in the early 1800s, when Napoleon and the Russian monarchy and high society were in full bloom, his portrayals of people and conditions mirror today (lesson: people really do not change, alas). <\/p>\n I admire Tolstoy and his range of learning <\/strong><\/p>\n I marvel at Tolstoy\u2019s apparent love of learning. For example, in addition to his own prolific writing, he compiled A Calendar of Wisdom<\/em><\/a>\u2014<\/em>daily quotes from thinkers over time. On 25 June, for example, he writes about how we don\u2019t often understand the impression we make on others. He quotes American writer and suffragist Lucy Malory, Greek philosopher Socrates, the Dhammapada Buddhist verses, and Greek orator Demosthenes. To do this suggests he must, too, have taken the time to slow down, find and absorb these sources, and organize them for every day of the year.<\/p>\n I credit Haisell and Tolstoy for helping me slow down in a few parts of my life. Where else could I find inspiration? I suspect my dog, Matisse, can offer some. But that\u2019s for another day. She\u2019s trying to convince me to join her for a nap. <\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n Today, on a walk, I stopped to study the pink-tinged leaves of a Korean dogwood tree and gave myself a pat on the back. When…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":63535,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2611],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-63534","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-buzz-headlines","wpcat-2611-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63534","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=63534"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63534\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/63535"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=63534"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=63534"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=63534"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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