There is a saying that could as well be the postulate for the slow food movement: “You are what you eat”. If that’s the case, I’d much rather be fresh, healthy and tasty as opposed to chemically processed and filled with preservatives. Wouldn’t you?

Ever since Estonia started to make it’s way to the Western society, we have always aspired to be like them. It’s no wonder we took over so many traditions, manners and ways to handle things just to make a leap from the East to the West as quick as possible. This was also the case with our eating habits. I can still remember when the first Western goods appeared in the shops and what kind of euphoria it caused. There were so many foods and drinks that so little of us had ever had the chance to taste. I dare to say that this kind of razzle-dazzle is still blinding our eyes but our consciousness has also risen a lot.

One thing that, despite of all our “efforts”, is still different in Estonia’s than in most of the Western countries, is the knowledge and habit of cooking our own meals from scratch. Most of us have family living at countrysides or farms that grow their own vegetables and seasonings. I personally have a father-in-law that is a professional fisherman and a hunter - a privilege I am greatly thankful for. My generation is also re-inventing the DIY’s in the kitchen and media promotes going back to the roots as well. There is nothing new to seeing very raw food products on the counters which yes, sometimes isn’t the nicest sight (i.e piggy claws/tails/heads or questionable dairy substances) but leaves definitely no question to each and every Estonian about the food’s journey to our tables - an important passage in the “chapters of slow living”.

But what’s life without paradoxes, right? Even though Estonia is rather “down to Earth” in an agricultural sense, the prices of unprocessed goods are quite high. A “favour” of the capitalist production chain, I suppose. Since it is more profitable for the large food stores to sell manufactured goods, it is fairly difficult and time-consuming to reach the unprocessed ones. But as a wise saying goes: “Where there’s a will, there’s a way”.

That is why the most eager one’s of us have launched the so-called eco-transportation systems. It means that food trailers visit local farmers in the county and distribute their products at the customers’ doors that have placed an order via internet beforehand. A chain that includes only three counterparts, almost no marketing costs and no need for conservation of huge quantities of food.

So in a way it is going past the industry and choosing two things extremely important in the slow food movement - a healthy diet and supporting local farmers. I greet such initiatives with great respect and hope that they will not be the last ones.

There are a lot of things that determine our lives and sometimes it seems that there is so little we can do to change it. Politics, world economy and international relations seem to be living in a separate world from us, ordinary people. It’s no wonder that people become more and more detached from what is going on around them. But is there really nothing we can do about it?

For two years now a group of Estonians have expressed great initiative and eagerness to contradict that kind of uncertainty. In May 2008 around 50 000 people came to the fore to clean the forests, parks and roadsides from garbage. In just five hours of work around 10 000 tons of trash was collected which could be said was the best birthday present for our country (Estonia turned 90 last year). The slogan of the project was simple: “Let’s do it!”

This May the initiative continued but under a new slogan and concept. It was called “My Estonia”. People came together as well, but this time not to do something but to put their heads together and think of ways to make the world a better place. There were agencies of that initiative set up in every county, village and town - close enough to everyone living in this country. They discussed the issues that were bothering them and tried to come up with suggestions on what should be done. No bluf, but concrete ideas.

This week one of the leading newspapers in Estonia publised some of those ideas, just to give us a peek on what was discussed. I was more than surprised that among proposals on how to make traffic safer and improve our education system, which are absolutely important topics as well, the slow movement has also crawled into the heads of so many people around me. Here are some examples:

How to make the most of the economic crisis?

• become friends with nature - go hiking, biking etc.
• talk to your children about how the world works
• do some gardening and help your neighbour in it as well
• pick your own berries and mushrooms from the woods
• bring back romance, take a midnight walk under the starry sky
• improve your cooking skills

A couple of months ago I was privileged enough to spend a whole week at my brother’s farm in a far-away place in the Sourthern part of Estonia - among forests and rivers, endless snow and freezing wind. I was accompanied by a four-year-old, a dog, a cat, five Scottish highlanders and two parrots - one light green and one turqoise blue. What a colourful company it was.

When I first heard of the offer I imagined myself switching off completely and doing lots of nothing for the whole seven days. I even thought I would have time to meditate. How silly of me! Did I mention that my main conversational partner was a soon-to-be 4-year-old, a witty and self-willed niece to whom I was appointed as an assistant in household assignments during her parents’ get-away-trip. My holiday turned out to be a whole different story from what I had planned.

But as the old folks used to say: “Life’s what happens while you’re making plans”. That’s why waking up at 6.30 am, making breakfast at 7, going to kindergarten at 8 and reading bedtime stories before sleep didn’t break me. Vice Versa, I got to experience a bunch of new and unfamiliar emotions (since I don’t have children myself).

One of the grandest discoveries was that I really enjoy living side by side with nature. I do have to admit that I’m strongly attached to the human society and although I was cut from the world wide web, a local radio station still filled my need for background noise. Even though I didn’t feel the pressure to cut myself completely off there was still a whole world full of silence surrounding me. It is an experience itself waking up when the sun rises and going to bed once it has set.

This week gave me a lot to think about. I realised that I am at a point in my life where I’m drawing a line between the necessary and the unnecessary, the real and the not-so-real. I understand that the society created by people is irreplaceable. It is a natural progress in the journey towards raising our living standards. But for some sad reason we, people, tend to exaggerate with many things - possibilities, necessities and resources. The present economic crisis is even too primitive as an example about over-demanding and over-offering, but it is also an obvious one.  It seems like the whole society is looking for new alternatives and is re-evaluating its actual needs. Thus is drawing the same kind of line as I am.

In order to know where to draw that line it is extremely useful to spend a week among nature, animals and a child. For them that line is undoubtedly distinct. It is us, the grown-up children, who tend to mess up the heads of the little ones. But until they reach the age when they become fluent in self-destruction and self-deception, they are as untouched and wise as nature and animals. If only their parents didn’t fill their little drawers with the dirty socks of the grown-up society without even noticing it.

How much do we really need the noise and flood of information? For whom do we really wake up and make breakfast for each morning? Where is the line drawn between comfort turning into an addiction and necessity turning into a burden?

Ask nature, animals and little children.

People seem to be a bit more broken lately than usual. I suppose it has got a lot to do with the overall negative vibes that have been haunting the economy and nature for the past years and now it has just approached us, people, as well. When I take a look around me, it seems like people are kneeling desperately behind a startline with an overwhelming fear in their eyes waiting for the big bang to start the frantic race. I watch them and ask myself: is it possible to win the race without rushing?

The slow movement preaches about enjoying the moment, existing here and now. But when we talk about it then it seems like we only take the pleasurable moments into consideration. The times of crisis we would rather like to supersede, perhaps even try to drown the problems into alcohol, hoping they don’t learn to swim.

But what would happen if we didn’t do that? What if you took those sleepless nights and unhungry mornings or the red eyes and shaking hands for what they really are - chapters in your personal book? What if we tried to experience grief and sorrow just like we experience joy and happyness? I am absolulety convinced that hardships always occur for a reason and as long as we refuse to learn from them they will keep coming back to us - until we get the point or die.* I will probably never forget the words of my bigger brother who once told me: “Every relationship has to survive several ends in order to keep growing.” To my mind I am my own closest and most important relationship! So maybe it is okay to sometimes feel that I have reached a point from where I can’t go on anymore? And then just keep on moving, more wiser and more balanced than before.

In the same way that being slow doesn’t mean idling, it also doesn’t always need be „fun“. Living slow means living here and now, in this moment, just the way it is. That also includes the moments of crisis, unawareness and the relationship that sometimes hurts. These moments are the lines you are writing in your personal book and that your children will read years from now. These ink stains and misprints that you are so desperately trying to hide are the ones that make you special and unique. Just the way you are, here and now…

In the end all we want is simply to find the people whom to sit on a park bench with and listen to the silence. The choice to make is whether we want to get there while running on a fast track or taking a nice walk in the woods.

* referring to the noted marketing expert Jack Trout who was the first to say: „Differentiate or die!“

I heard it once being said that “time-deficiency kill’s creativity”. But how is it possible that time has become a deficiency when we have “all the time in the world”?

The question arose from life itself. I’m a full-time employee and also attending school to get my master’s done. Plus I’m trying to improve the Slow Movement here in Estonia, which besides making contacts and working on the website means that I should find time to practise yoga and pilates, spend time with my family and myself as well - to find my centre and my zen.

When I take a look at my colleagues at work, it seems that the more you over-work, the more you put in to the organisation. In order to be viewed as worthy of my salary I have to run down the halls with papers in my hand, attend as many meetings as possible and put on a busy-looking face when I’m actually checking the latest news online. And I’m quite sure that many of my colleagues are really good at presenting the same image on a daily basis (actually my days at the office are dauntingly similar to the series “The Office”!!).

All this makes me question about the quality of the fuss we have to put up with at work each day. How to fight the “demons” of Slow, who tell me to take it easy - take a little break now and then just to relax my mind and body, make myself a hot cup of cocoa and chat with my colleagues on a personal level (because they are definitely interesting people behind their “busy” masks). How can I do that without feeling that I have again betrayed my beloved boss?

I really liked an article that described how respectfully Japanese people communicate to each other at work: when someone is concentrated on a task then they are not interfered unless they signal that it is indeed okay to be bothered. How wonderful would it be if it actually was a standard in our organizations as well? Just to respect each other and our time.

The article also said that the Japanese know well how to manage time and allow themselves to have a personal life as well. It seems to me that it is the American and European madness for success that forces us to think that the more hours I dedicate, the more effective I am. I really enjoyed finding out that it has actually been proven empirically that reducing working hours does not diminish effectiveness (to take a closer look, click here).

That is why I refuse to be brainwashed into the working mania. I do have a life after 5 pm and I’ll be damned if in thirty years time I had to look back and regret all the things I missed out on because my to-do list at work was longer than the Chinese Wall.

So, from this day forward, I don’t feel guilty when I close the office door behind me. It’s the only way I can return to work with a smile on my face the next morning. That doesn’t mean that I’m willing to put my relations with my boss at risk or not want to be good at what I do. I just have to figure out the happy medium and how to stay slow. As they say: it’s easy, but it’s not simple!

Slow means different things to different people. That’s also what Susan Radstrom discussed in her latest blog entry “The corporate side of slow” here in SlowPlanet. I’ve been having the same kind of thoughts lately and couldn’t agree more. There is a corporate level of slow that comes to life via organisations and movements (Cittaslow, SlowFood, International Institute for Not Doing Much, etc). And there is an individual way of slow thinking that appears in the way people think, feel and act. But there is also a common denominator to the two sides (besides the word “slow”) and that, I believe, is quality. Be it great food, people we love or a job that gives us complete satisfaction.

I, myself, come from and live in Estonia - a small country on the Eastern border of Europe. This geopolitical location is actually extremely challenging - to be the link between the East and the West. This is the kind of peculiarity that does not only exist on the map but also in the minds of the people. No matter how badly we want to belong to the Western community, we will always have one foot on the other side. That is also what I believe makes the Slow movement in Estonia a bit different than it might be in the Western European countries.

For a while now, almost 20 years, Estonia has been an independent country and for five years we have enjoyed the fruits from the garden of the EU. Nothing stopped us from truly believing that we were indeed an equal partner to the rest of the Western world. Life seemed to get better each day and nothing was impossible - more workplaces were created, cities grew and streets filled with tourists.

Until…

… as a part of the global economic environment the crisis knocked on our door as well. Tens of thousands of people have lost their jobs (which in a country of 1.4 million is quite high), banks are filled with troubled debtors and sales numbers are decreasing in every sector you can think of. The bubble we lived in has now burst.

In the midst of all this the invasion of the Slow movement has been quite intense. The pressure to take time off and reassess our priorities is unavoidable. Having done no research and relying only on my personal observations I can say that the corporate kind of slow has not yet raised its head in Estonia. There are groups of people who practice slow life in their own way but they are not that eminent in the society as a whole. City governments are still struggling to meet the needs of their citizens, all kinds of projects have been put on hold and streets have become weirdly quiet.

Fortunately the individual approach to slow is more pervasive. For example, a recent article from a local newspaper reads:

Despite the difficult times he is optimistic and believes that nothing happens without a reason: after having spent such a long time working abroad he can now watch his children grow and has decided never to go away from home again. He would rather keep a low profile when things get better and try to have a life here, at home as a family.

This is a perfect way to describe the process of slowing down in Estonia. Of course, there families for whom losing the income isn’t just making life more complicated but rather impossible. And there are those who get even more anxious to grow their facade of a luxurious lifestyle when pressured to take time off. But, all in all, I’d like to think that a little humbleness is good for us once in a while. Difficulties make us rethink our priorities and possibilities, people stick together and depend on each other more, there is more time for details to consider and emotions to share. And since quantity is out of the question, quality steps in.

Quality - the essence of slow.

2009 is said to be the year of innovation. It’s an initiative of the European Commission with the aim of highlighting the role that creativity and innovation play in fostering economic and social prosperity. Great. Another typical “much ado about nothing”?

The problem with the word “innovation” - at least in Estonia - is that people are tired of it. They are tired of the fuss about it, especially because it’s still not very clear what it really stands for. Everybody talks about it but that’s that. And this has devaluated the meaning and effect of innovation.

What has all this got to do with the Slow Movement you ask? Well, when I did some research on the plans and projects of the Innovation year 2009 in Estonia and checked their website I noticed that all the companies end entrepreneurs that had registered to be a part of the innovation movement were not entirely R&D and technology based - a lot of them, who think they are being innovative, are actually living slow - i.e. a non-profit organisation that promotes walking, a local ecotourism union, an energy cottage that provides you with herbs grown in an unpolluted environment and also offers a chance to take long walks in their stress-relieving and energyzing trails. If that’s not slow then what is?

When they talk about innovation they usually mean “creating something new”. In that sense the slow movement isn’t all that innovative at all because there is nothing new to taking time off, investing time and attention in our loved ones or reading a great book instead of watching another late night movie on telly. But the problem with mankind is that we tend to forget the truths that are centuries old. That’s why it is extremely innovative to bring that knowledge back to people around us. Especially at the time of economic crisis and over-globalisation. There is too much information, even noise I would say, which makes people deaf and numb. And this is what makes the initiative of creativity at an international level that much more welcome.

According to Wikipedia the word “innovation” stands for a new way of doing something. So why not live slow without giving up a particle of our living standards? Let the year of innovation begin!