How To Slow Down Time

Rituals are the milestones of the soul

“Good grief!” I thought. “She’s not just adjusting her lipstick in a mirror, she’s got her whole make-up bag and she’s going through her whole routine! On the 98 bus!”

A couple of decades back, when I first noticed this, it felt like an intrusion, another puncture of the public space. This was the new tinny earbud noise, but felt more profane.

Like every other judgment I’ve made, I soon adjusted my position once I started to imagine why this had happened.

We were all on the bus early. We were all going to work. We all had a choice. Sleep less, or turn the bus into a dressing room — or an office!

We were all losing the privacy, the intimacy, the sacrality, of ritual, through the attritional forces of modern life.

I was just as horrified the first time I saw a friend shove a can of Lynx inside his top and spray the ubiquitous scent into his armpits while smiling cheerily at me. Who had the time between the late evening at the office and a quickly snatched game of football with workmates to use the bathroom in a leisurely manner?

I was judgmental in my 20s, 30s maybe even my 40s, but life became a lot more interesting when I asked myself why I’d had a strong reaction to new social behaviour, and what might have caused the social change I’d never signed up for.

We are all victims of the grind.

The antidote is the quiet restoration of ritual.

Muslims have five daily ritual prayers, the idea of which is to reset our orientation towards God. Given how much we’re spinning these days, we could all use an orientation reset, but say you’re not a Muslim — most of my readers aren’t — what could you do today, easily to start reclaiming what was silently taken, and why?

Take one breath with full presence. Then try another. And one more. Three breaths. Eyes closed. Bring your attention to the now for just three breaths. Do it enough and that noise in your head will reduce and you’ll want more of that. You’ve had it before, that presence, that sense of “I am”, not “I am exhausted” or “I am broke”, but just “I am”. Have you been bored lately? Why not? Try it. While you’re at it, talk to ChatGPT about the Default Mode Network and why too much of that can lead to rumination and thence ruination. Three mindful breaths, performed in private, ritually, before you begin something, to mark a moment, to prepare, to recover, so long as you set an intent, will bring back the power of ritual to your life, and who knows, maybe even help you recover some of that “I am” energy.

Make a hot drink with full attention and focus on every single step. Measure everything intently, even if you’re not as much of a nerd as me, you can still measure “one teabag, three minutes, no sugar, two tablespoons of milk, three seconds of clockwise stirring”, right? I’m not going to bore you with using the Weiss Distribution Technique to prepare the coffee puck for the most even extraction at a 2:1 ratio over 10 seconds of pre-infusion and 25 seconds at full pressure infusion — oh wait — I just did.

Get dressed deliberately, and with full reverence for your armour. Be grateful for your shield against the weather, your symbolism to the world, your outward identity expression kit. Do it consciously, in a specific order, and notice the order. Notice the clothes. Feel the fabric. Describe it. Feel the “I am” that feels the fabric.

And as for why? Well, it slows down time. It marks the moment. It leaves footprints in the sand. It’s evidence for “I am” and a counterargument to “I have to work” and “I have to go” and “I’ve got no time”.

Haven’t you wondered why time flies by so fast? Rituals, even the smallest ones, will slow it back down again.