Invitation to Slow Living

SA Episode #10

Hello friends,

Greetings from Transylvania 🧛

Here’s a thought exercise I came up with while “wasting” my time in a cozy café a few days ago. My conviction is that happiness can’t be defined. And striving to (find it and) define it leads to unhappiness. Yet it’s a context-dependent phenomenon—I may receive, in random scenarios, some swift glimpses of knowledge as to what happiness feels like. As soon as these moments are over, my hypothesis perishes; its definition gets blurry again. Doubts start to kick in, giving rise to new chances to “waste” my time.

Hypothesis:

Happiness means having control of your day from start to finish, doing whatever you want as an expression of genuine curiosity, discipline, and responsibility.

Tradition 1916 Kenyon Cox (American, 1856–1919)

The Swiss get it

3 Aphorisms from my book

I.

What we often call “rationality” is simply undetected rhetoric.

II.

Measure wisdom in risks taken, exposure to challenges, not years. A young wolf is wiser than an old dog.

III.

Skepticism is the elegance of wisdom—but too much skepticism gets you drunk with impasse. You want to be a risk-taker who loves uncertainty.

Skepticism doesn’t mean inaction but rather taking advantage of your doubts and questions—turning them into gold and profit.

Invitation to Slow Living

IT’S A SUNNY DAY in Bucharest. And I’m flâneuring around my favorite neighborhood: Cotroceni. Cozy human-scaled architecture built in the interwar period—you can’t help but wonder what vibe these streets used to boast 100 years ago.

As soon as you step out of the neighborhood, the scenery changes dramatically. You’re forced to say goodbye to peace and beauty to enter a concrete jungle. High-rise communist blocks evenly separated by large boulevards await you. One minute ago you were in Paris or Istanbul; now you’re in Moscow. There’s no purgatory between these two worlds. I find this fascinating and unsettling at the same time.

Never in history was a capital city destroyed as much and as rushed during periods of peace as Bucharest was between 1980-1989. Many mixed-use neighborhoods featuring buildings influenced by Byzantine and Western elements, but also houses in the vernacular, were shattered by Mister Ceaușescu.

Everything in these pictures doesn’t exist anymore (Uranus, Bucharest)

Some of them very nice; others quite banal yet still in harmony with the street and landscape. How massive was the destruction? To put things in perspective, in square meters, the equivalent of Venice. Cotroceni was supposed to be next. Luckily, this never happened as communism collapsed. And the grand scheme (thank God) wasn’t finished.

Aerial view of the old town island of Venice and its surrounding lagoons

Something you immediately notice in Bucharest as an outsider—or in any other big cities—is that everyone is running somewhere. To catch the bus, metro, tram. Maybe they have a meeting. Or they’re late for lunch. I saw one guy running to his Porsche (nice car indeed) to then get stuck in traffic.

I learned something ostensibly vapid yet incredibly valuable from Nassim Taleb: don’t be in a rush. Resist running to be on schedule. This is an open invitation to slow living. Once you refuse to be in a rush, you will feel “the true elegance and aesthetics in behavior, a sense of being in control of your time, schedule, and life.”

Being in a rush by default is a declaration of slavery. This is no exaggeration; even if you’re the CEO, the big boss—if you sit at the top of a hierarchy—the truth is, you fail to be in control of your life. Yet this toxic and contagious urge to do everything in a rush is no longer simply tolerated or normalized but rewarded.

Being busy is a status symbol now. We feel worthy of respect only if we always have something to do. You feel uncomfortable stopping by to smell the flowers. You feel silly stopping by to feed the birds. You may pass by a few Art Nouveau buildings almost daily, but you never give them the proper analysis they deserve. Talking about architecture, the worst decisions in my life were either made drunk or in a rush—Ceaușescu wasn’t drunk when he destroyed Bucharest.

Try to resist linking this attitude simply to our work culture. This is our default state in general. Take a look at the way we, moderns, practice hobbies. We go to the gym in a rush. We train in a rush. We get home in a rush. Then we cook or prepare something to eat in a rush. I once committed a blunder and agreed to go play basketball with some productivity-oriented fellows. I was flabbergasted to learn that we were supposed to only play for 30 minutes because then we had to go jogging for another 30 minutes and then do some pushups and pullups for another 15 minutes. They’re on a quest to “optimize” their health and performance. I just wanted to play basketball.

Imagine you’re finally on vacation. You fly from London to Mallorca. Your girlfriend invites a few friends. Someone from your group—there’s always someone like that—is keen on showing you what you should do, where you should eat, what you should visit, and has crafted a well-ordered schedule so you can be efficient…on vacation. Don’t you dare suggest going with the flow as an alternative or else you risk getting crucified. There’s some kind of “undercurrent of panic, this unspoken rule that,” as Paul Skallas wrote, “if you’re not busy, you’re not really living.”

If you want to rediscover the subtle art of slow living, come and spend at least two weeks in a remote village in (Southern) Transylvania. The countryside has remained almost intact since the Middle Ages. Little has changed. Transylvania is the last truly wild and medieval corner Europe has to offer. If you live in a big city, spending a few days here will likely give you mixed feelings. You will love the silence at first but soon find yourself inexplicably anxious and restless. This is because your default state—constantly being busy, in a rush, always having something to do—will feel threatened, under attack, and thus provoked to make a move. And the best move it can pull off is trying to convince you that silence and boredom are bugs, not features.

In his lovely yet controversial book Along the Enchanted Way, William Blacker painted a charming picture of the Transylvanian countryside, which gives you a sneak peek as to what mastering the art of slow living means. The communist regime lacked the organizational skills to destroy these villages. Such a blessing!

Biertan, Transylvania

Being incompetent is not always a curse, especially when the people in charge are evil. That’s why the countryside was able to preserve its soul. William Blacker in his own words:

I remember particularly a festival among the trees on the edge of the forest where fiddlers played in competition with the birds in the branches. The villagers joined arms, making a circle, stamping their feet rhythmically on the grass and singing the shepherds’ songs at the top of their voices. The dancing and singing went on all afternoon and evening in dappled shade, like some ancient bucolic festival. What, I thought to myself, could have been more colorful and full of life than this idyllic scene? Lying on the grassy bank of a stream, in the shade of flickering beech leaves, listening to the sound of trickling water and watching these smiling and laughing people...

Slow living shouldn’t be a trend but your default state. Historically and evolutionary speaking, being in a hurry is a crazy exception, not the norm. Seneca argues that “nothing is as useful as it should be if it’s done with haste.” Being in a rush cancels the present moment which in turn cancels anything of depth and value on a spiritual level. Being in a rush, as a default state, means living in denial of death.

Wrapping up...

Hope you liked this episode!

Any feedback, suggestion, or criticism is welcome.

Thank you for your time,

Vizi Andrei

Creator of KronArête