A very simple analysis of the historic evolution over the past three centuries may go like this: We earthlings have been able to speed up most of the natural and man-made processes around us, reaching today an accelerated pace which it is hard for any living being to cope with. Higher speed and acceleration unleash more heat around us, but also inside us, in so far as we are involved and submerged in those high speed processes. Not everyone on earth takes active part in this overall tendency, but everyone on earth is, whether he or she wants it or not, a part of it. High speed and heat provoke a complex state of stress in the human body and mind, the consequences of which we are still not fully able to decipher. The omens, however, are not looking good. It seems that the heat provoked by the wave of global acceleration is both causing serious damage to life around us and inside us.
This analysis is one narrative among many. I must confess that I like it for its simplicity. The real state of affairs is probably much more complex, but what if this complexity came from something really simple? An imbalance between two forces which hardly match and complement each other anymore. On the one hand, we have speed, heat, noise and stress. On the other hand, we have what is hard to find anymore, slowness, coolness, silence and calmness.
The first parameter seems to have got the upper hand in recent history, which is what creates a certain imbalance on earth. Somebody a bit more nostalgic than me might even say that we have lost the balance which preserves life on earth and makes it grow. Is it possible to recover the balance lost, if it is really lost? It would not be enough to balance the two forces; more would be needed, as in the ancient Chinese symbol of balance, yin-yang, in which the two complementary forces are balancing each other – being at the same time inside each other.
Balance comes from within. There is no other way of stopping a fast running frain train slowly and gently but from the inside, with a subtle, intelligent touch, so that what is out of control does not end up becoming completely uncontrollable and destructive, but it can instead become balanced and remain intact. Recovering balance starts with ourselves, it starts inside ourselves, taking it a bit slower and a bit cooler, being a bit more silent and calmer in the middle of late modern furore and frenzy.
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