Beautiful masonic plate

IN PRAISE OF SLOWNESS I was walking in the sun, an enormous bag on my back and the path was streched in front of me. I was hungry, I was tired but nobody was waiting for me. I had all the time necessary to reach the end of this road, but even so I was walking quickly. I suddenly realised that it served no purpose to hurry and that I needed to adopt a state of mind which would allow me to appreciate the actual moment and not hurry. It served no purpose to grumble and rebell against a situation over which I had no control, I needed to chanel and keep my strength and try to appreciate the slowness of the moment. Those who know me will smile about this because this is not me at all. Precisely because it is not me, I wished to work on this notion, as if I was trying to capture its benefits to inable me to one day wonder slowly along my path. Introduction : We often think about slowness as something negative : to use this term when speaking of somebody’s mind is a way of insinuating that they are slow witted; when speaking of the administration it signifies a malfunction. One could find many more examples. Not to be "speedy" in ones state of mind or ones actions means not being "in", on the edge of normality, not being aware of the actual world and its customs. Nowadays our society favours speed with which we associate efficiency, modernity and in a certain way youth. It is man’s pride which makes him impose his rythm on life opposing nature’s which seems to be more slow. To provide an answer to this accelaration, the research of slowness must be a personnal choice, I shall try to demonstrate how such an attitude can be seductive for an individual and absoloutely necessary for society. I shall then present all that the masonic attitudes owe to this slowness. This brutal acceleration without going back to the origins has over the last century incited an urge for speed. We are searching for performance in every area, technical and human. An exemple of this is sport. Does this complusive dynamic only depend on the progress of technic, or does this progress show an unconscious and collective desire to hide the traces of a period of terrible wars in order to rebuild a new world ? Both reasons are probably involved in this race but the result is that everything is and will be getting faster. The industrial world with help of new technology has launched into a war against waisted time. What could have just been an everyday technical facilty has become a collective obsession, a lifestyle that each person adopts with more or less faciltiy and grace. To convince oneself of this, one only has to remember the sensations felt when adventuring into a busy city during the rush hour or on the contrary into a country which culture is relaxed. We often have the sensation that our personnal clock is out of balance with the rest of society. « The technical revolution gave man the power of speed and is considered as a form of ecstacy » this was written by Milan Kundera and it is undeniable that if we all plunge into this ecstatic state, we will not be aware of the dangers. Nowadays everything is given value by the time it takes to be done, meaning that anything made over a longer period is therefore less valuable. It is considered that less time it takes to fabricate more profit can be made. This means that it seems more important to answer as quickly as possible rather than giving a considered answer, as if the time gained would make a better life for everyone. Lets try and see if some examples can help and show more clearly. Work is an excellent area where one is always looking to do things more quickly. The perfect image is to be dynamic, effective and more productive, being capable of accomplishing several tasks in a given time – this is now known as « time optimization ». Globaly it seems to make a general economic difference, more benefits for buisness, shares and other forms of stock dividends can also be a witness to this phenomenom. However not everybody benefits. It also can cause pathological behaviour or psycological or physical upsets because of the more frequent use of pharmacological products and drugs. On the other hand the internet’s most popular frequent usage is for emailing. Once one has tasted the whole simplicity rapidity and cheapness how can one go without it? We are more and more using this way of communicating leaving aside the more traditionnal ways such as postal correspondance. Why shouldn’t we move on from the old to the new you may ask ?…Because the new method obliges us to write in a different manner. Once more because of the precious gain in time, we write abbreviations, we are not always courtious, we forget about style and spelling and of course we replace handwriting by typing. Even worse these messages will never have a physical trace and therefore have a life spanmuch shorter than a letter. What would be left of Hugo’s correspondance to Madame de Sévigné if had heard of eamils ? Even meal times are shortened. In the United States the problem was solved by the fact as there are hardly any familyt meals so everyone just dips into the fridge when hungry. In other countries, because of lack of time, we tend to turn facility of ready-made meals, forgotten as soon as eaten…that is when we do not have the possibility of going to fast food restaurants to save even more time. In a different area such as transport the new technology has allowed an enormous leap (for those who have the money) by allowing people to travel to Prague for the weekend and be back in Paris on the Monday morning. Tourism has become a massive indsutry, and the planet has shrunk. The contact with other cultures, the transfer of wealth from rich countries to poor ones does have positive points but the voyage does take on another aspect. For a lot of travel writers, such as Nicolas Bouvier, a trip is more the appreciation of the moment rather than the destination, it is a way of being available for time itself and also for others. It is for the traveller an interior approach as well as an exterior one, and one can sense that discovering a mountain sumit by cable car will not have the same impact as if you had got there after hours of walking. Your romantic life can also be effected eventhough one could imagine that obviously speed is anti productive. Relationships are made and break up faster, time is ticking by and the first steps of a relationship suffer from this. The time is long gone when a man would woo a woman and gallantery was important, now we enter into a relationship head first and think about our feelings afterwards…if ever they appear! That is where the problem lies. There are so many examples of this way of acting because this frantic attitude has become part of our lifestyle, but what is the point. We all know how perverse it is. In this state of mind it is interesting to note what has happened in terms of road safety :car enterprises and technology have been offering over the last years car which are faster, publicity is aimed at the feeling of power that speed can provide – this is more less associated with virility -, and all can see the damage that this quest for speed has created. We now need to go back in time, restrain these urges and learn how to accept and even to appreciate this imposed slowness. Through these examples we can clearly see where speed is leading us but without continuing with more dramatic illustrations, it would be profitable to ask ourselves the meaning of all of this in our lives. We have to achieve gools in our work but are we happier and richer thanks to this? We are more widely and more rapidly informed than before but are we more educated and more mature ? In order to experience more things it seems we are missing out on the reality of our lives. We switch over, we surf, we are late, we are always running like the white rabbit in Alice in Wonderland, but what are we running towards ?What will be the benefit ? Something absurd ? As well as associating rapidity with efficacy one can associate beauty with slowness. We should look at nature to see what slowness can do for us. Trees with a slow growth such as box trees, olive trees and oak trees are all noble woods and are the hardest and best for sculpture and for producing masterpiece better than those quick grown spieces whose fibres are soft and intended for more speedly done creations. There are a lot of other domains in which speed has no relationship with quality. Whatever the art or creativity they do not go hand in hand with speed. These creations need personal progress, trips forward and backwards in time aswell as a lot of personal attention. One has to be "Simenon" to suggest this challenge to ones intellect. In order to write a book in a week in a glass cage in front of a public. One therfore must be great ! I’m not one of these, and all those people who are confronted with writing, know how long it takes to move from the thought to a satisfying written text. A spiritual or religious experience is also incompatible with haste, it moves forward little by little to accompany the inner voice. Voltaire wrote about the masonic slowness : « A slow world is directing itself towards wisdom.» It is one of the masonic virtues eventhough it is not always clearly mentioned, it introduces slowness into our lives, it has oppened this particular door in which so many things are different, up till the point when everybody is aware that the world is not profane because we are part of a history in which time has moved forward. The personal act which leads one to be a candidate requires long and mature reflexion meaning meetings, readings and periods of reflexion. Then will come the inquiries and self examination, where it is recommended to weigh ones words in order not to be judged for having a superficial and rapid spirit, which would largely influence the final decision. Time will pass before initiation. The ceremony will be conducted by a senator in order to have an impact and leave a long lasting memory in the initiated person’s mind. During the rest of the masonic course, the apprentice, the companion and the master have to accomplish this personal and intimate path which claims that indispensable slowness to acceed to a deep reflexion either to work in the lodge or to appreciate other peoples speeches and to take part in discussions or even to help the writing of a plate. To imagine these tradition without the necessary slowness would be to withdraw the beauty from them and prevent us from enjoying the drifting inner voyage where we create during a few hours a few moments of truth. From an individual point of view slowness can be cansidered on a hygenic level as to aid physical and mental well-being. When we realise how violent we are towards ourselves we decide to calm down, not to secong guess our inner forces and try to more modestly manage the intellectual and physical capital we were given. It is a respect we owe ourselves. To resist against the madness of the world, slowness is a whole attitude and a personal choice. To make room for it in our innerselves, in our lives and in our relationships. It is a non violent reaction against our society and a tranquil affirmation of our personal rhythm, a peaceful reconquest of ourselves, a step on the path to wisdom. « Whoever stops humanity on his path either by distraction or by mistake, is a benefactor » wrote Cioran. The title of the film « Year 01 » which presented a collective utopia : « We shall stop everything, we shall think and it is not sad. » Slowness can be a way to a personal utopia that I wish you all to come across. Maybe what we are looking for in this slowness is nothing more than harmony. Maybe we are looking for a physical harmony, harmony in our contact with others, also in facing difficult situations and at last harmony towards the natural world that created us and that is around us. To finish because it is time to finish and let the words circulate, I shall end with a dialogue quoted from Saint-Exupéry :- Good morning , said the little prince. – Good morning, said the merchant selling sophisticated tablets against thirst. You can take one a week and you do not feel the need to drink. – Why are you selling these ? Asked the little prince. – It’s a great gain of time, said the merchant. Experts have made a lot of calculations. We gain 53 minutes a day. – And what can one do with these 53 minutes ? – What you want. – If I had 53 minutes, I would walk very slowly towards a fountain. »

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