My great-grandmother turned a hundred and one recently. She was born in 1920. It blows my mind to imagine the scale of her life - when she was a teenager, Manuel Quezon was president. She lived through World War II in her twenties. Her great-grandfather was a full-blooded Spaniard who lived in Aklan right before the Philippine Revolution. She called her boss Don Salvador, because his family was old money. Old old money.
Time is strange to think about, because its flow, while constant, differs based on our perception. Fifteen minutes in traffic can feel like an eternity, while a weeklong vacation seems to fly by in an instant.
We live in an ever-accelerating world. Everything is fast now - talk, food, fashion. Letters that took months to arrive by ship have been replaced by instant messaging. Factories and the Internet have dramatically sped up our lives, theoretically leaving us with more free time than ever before.
But how do we use our extra time? Since everything is instantaneous now, we can fit so many tasks into a work day - answering emails, socializing with friends, researching on a topic, attending a meeting. Splitting our attention has led to shortening its span. To think, I used to devour whole novels in an afternoon when I was a child; now I can barely get through a three-minute article without cycling through my browser tabs and notifications.
These refill shops are nothing new; novel problems sometimes require “old-fashioned” solutions.
Then there’s the fact that a lot of things now are for one-time use, the most prominent example being plastic packaging. The last few years have seen the rise of “refill shops”, where you can bring your own container and fill it up with grains and nuts, pay for it, then bring it home so that no packaging waste is generated. When I told my mother about this, she scoffed - she was born and raised in the province, and when she was a kid, my grandmother would send her to the sari-sari store with an empty glass container of vinegar to have it refilled there. Again, no packaging waste generated. These refill shops are nothing new; novel problems sometimes require “old-fashioned” solutions.
Thinking about time also has me reflecting on how fast technology has changed in recent years. I’m twenty-three years old now. I spent my early years winding up unraveled cassette tapes with a pencil for fun; then came CDs and USBs. In Grade 6, we switched from the overhead projector (OHP) and Manila paper to PowerPoint presentations. In high school, my work as the publication’s editor was made infinitely easier thanks to the rolling out of Google Docs, allowing me to keep track of the different versions of articles. Entering college meant Uber and Netflix, turning obsolete regular taxis and cable television respectively. So much change in so little time - no wonder our generation has such trouble grounding itself values-wise.
Instead, I’d like to propose something called “heritage of slowness” - a culture of patience and mindful consumption.
Nick Joaquin coined the term “heritage of smallness” to describe Filipinos’ tendency to be unambitious and work on a micro scale, as reflected in our commerce, art, politics, and history. Instead, I’d like to propose something called “heritage of slowness” - a culture of patience and mindful consumption. This is best reflected in how things were built to last during our grandparents’ generation. They were self-sufficient; according to sociologist Belen Medina, the barrio-dwelling Filipino family grew its own food, tailored its own clothes, and built its own house. Can we not incorporate that kind of thinking into our present lives? Not just with material goods, but with the way we conduct our presence online. We’re used to jumping from one dopamine fix to the next, whether that fix takes the form of an article, video, or tweet. Once we get tired of one website or trend, we move onto whatever’s newer and shinier. But thinking back to this heritage of slowness, can we instead be more intentional and take time to reflect? Not to sound like a boomer, but I’ve noticed that many people today can’t seem to consume long-form media such as novels or plays anymore; everything must be condensed into something bite-sized and digestible. Microwavable information.
I don’t profess to having all the answers, no. But I believe this is certainly something worth thinking about. In such a fast-paced world, have we ever stopped ourselves and asked, “What am I running at breakneck speed for?”
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