![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Motto for 2023: festina lente!
Jan. 20th, 2023 12:13 amPeople were asking me what my theme for 2023 is. I think it's going to end up having multiple themes that apply to different aspects or dimensions of my life. At the moment, I'm kinda thinking I'll have a whole suite of themes, similar to how Boy Scouts has the Scout Motto, Scout Slogan, Scout Law, Scout Oath. I don't think I'll go so far as to have a 2023 Oath or anything... but who knows.
I was never clear on why one was called the Scout Motto and the other the Scout Slogan. If I think about it now, maybe the Motto is for oneself, and the Slogan is for the whole community (and other people who encounter the community).
In that case, my motto for 2023 is festina lente. In Latin, that's literally: "Hurry slowly!" It's a pretty common phrase, but I think it's really important for me as I try to do a lot in my daily life. Sometimes I am very clearly trying to do way too much. The general meaning, at least how I've learned it, is about balancing ambition, maybe aggression (in terms of fast progress) with things like care, deliberateness, and patience. Let me see if I can find an explanation online... and yes, the saying has its own damn Wikipedia article:
That's actually better than I thought: I assumed I'd need to customize the saying to apply more readily to my life.
It applies at multiple time scales for me. At the daily level, it's felt recently like I have a ton to do, I'm not really doing enough. But over the course of multiple days, if I make progress on various things, it really does add up. So I don't need to be in so much of a hurry to make milestone-like progress on individual days, or get to some arbitrary chunk of time (like the 99 minutes I was requiring for things) across multiple goals.
The moment to moment level is pretty close to the interpretation the Wikipedia gives. At work recently, I often feel a pressure to get things done really quickly and efficiently so I can "clear" and make things easier for the next shift. But lately it's becoming clear to me that sometimes trying to move too quickly leads to some pretty careless mistakes, and deprives me of the opportunity to approach problems thoughtfully when I'm rushing.
But back to the larger picture, maybe at the level of months and years: I do often fret that the things I'm doing don't seem to be showing very immediate rewards. A lot of the things I'm investing my time and effort into probably aren't going to yield tangible rewards until several years from now. And sometimes I can feel an impatience with how things are right now. (My coach Duff put it well: I'm working on things that have a lag in their results.) While waiting for the eventual results, it's not really going to help to rush to fit in more and more to get to the rewards faster. The most important goals I'm undertaking are indeed best approached in as consistent and sustainable manner as my life allows.
I think festina lente implies a stripey stack of timescales. Let's say yellow is festina (hurry) and blue is the lente (slowly). If I'm doing stuff lente at the immediate timescale, the carefulness will reduce errors and allow progress to move steadily, and in fact rather quickly on the larger timescale of multiple days. At the level above that, though, I still want to be patient and understand that the rewards will take time to come, as my efforts are cultivating the place for them to grow.
The colors of the stripes can also be inverted: hustling through challenging day after day can make the week easier and more laid back overall, because I remained engaged; the reliable rhythm of a week leads to surprising gains on the level of months or seasons. At the year level, it might feel like things remained pretty stable: my life arrangements have remained largely the same. But on the scale of multiple years, it is clear that I have changed and matured a lot, and am that larger in terms of experience.
festina lente encapsulates a kind of yin-yang dynamic, if I can notice and apply it to situations where I might otherwise be getting stuck due to being too much in one mode.
So, there we go! That's my motto for 2023, meaning it's something I'm going to apply to myself.
I do wonder what I want to choose as the slogan, though! I think that coming up with one is best approached with festina lente, because I want it to be something that applies both to me and is meaningful (or at least that kind of self-evident you take for granted but rarely implement) to others.
I was never clear on why one was called the Scout Motto and the other the Scout Slogan. If I think about it now, maybe the Motto is for oneself, and the Slogan is for the whole community (and other people who encounter the community).
In that case, my motto for 2023 is festina lente. In Latin, that's literally: "Hurry slowly!" It's a pretty common phrase, but I think it's really important for me as I try to do a lot in my daily life. Sometimes I am very clearly trying to do way too much. The general meaning, at least how I've learned it, is about balancing ambition, maybe aggression (in terms of fast progress) with things like care, deliberateness, and patience. Let me see if I can find an explanation online... and yes, the saying has its own damn Wikipedia article:
Festina lente or speûde bradéōs (σπεῦδε βραδέως, pronounced [spêu̯.de bra.dé.ɔːs]) is a classical adage and oxymoron meaning "make haste slowly" (sometimes rendered in English as "more haste, less speed").
[...]
The original form of the saying, σπεῦδε βραδέως speũde bradéōs, is Classical Greek, of which festina lente is the Latin translation. The words σπεῦδε and festina are second-person-singular present active imperatives, meaning "make haste", while βραδέως and lente are adverbs, meaning "slowly".
[...]
The meaning of the phrase is that activities should be performed with a proper balance of urgency and diligence. If tasks are rushed too quickly then mistakes are made and good long-term results are not achieved. Work is best done in a state of flow in which one is fully engaged by the task and there is no sense of time passing.
That's actually better than I thought: I assumed I'd need to customize the saying to apply more readily to my life.
It applies at multiple time scales for me. At the daily level, it's felt recently like I have a ton to do, I'm not really doing enough. But over the course of multiple days, if I make progress on various things, it really does add up. So I don't need to be in so much of a hurry to make milestone-like progress on individual days, or get to some arbitrary chunk of time (like the 99 minutes I was requiring for things) across multiple goals.
The moment to moment level is pretty close to the interpretation the Wikipedia gives. At work recently, I often feel a pressure to get things done really quickly and efficiently so I can "clear" and make things easier for the next shift. But lately it's becoming clear to me that sometimes trying to move too quickly leads to some pretty careless mistakes, and deprives me of the opportunity to approach problems thoughtfully when I'm rushing.
But back to the larger picture, maybe at the level of months and years: I do often fret that the things I'm doing don't seem to be showing very immediate rewards. A lot of the things I'm investing my time and effort into probably aren't going to yield tangible rewards until several years from now. And sometimes I can feel an impatience with how things are right now. (My coach Duff put it well: I'm working on things that have a lag in their results.) While waiting for the eventual results, it's not really going to help to rush to fit in more and more to get to the rewards faster. The most important goals I'm undertaking are indeed best approached in as consistent and sustainable manner as my life allows.
I think festina lente implies a stripey stack of timescales. Let's say yellow is festina (hurry) and blue is the lente (slowly). If I'm doing stuff lente at the immediate timescale, the carefulness will reduce errors and allow progress to move steadily, and in fact rather quickly on the larger timescale of multiple days. At the level above that, though, I still want to be patient and understand that the rewards will take time to come, as my efforts are cultivating the place for them to grow.
The colors of the stripes can also be inverted: hustling through challenging day after day can make the week easier and more laid back overall, because I remained engaged; the reliable rhythm of a week leads to surprising gains on the level of months or seasons. At the year level, it might feel like things remained pretty stable: my life arrangements have remained largely the same. But on the scale of multiple years, it is clear that I have changed and matured a lot, and am that larger in terms of experience.
festina lente encapsulates a kind of yin-yang dynamic, if I can notice and apply it to situations where I might otherwise be getting stuck due to being too much in one mode.
So, there we go! That's my motto for 2023, meaning it's something I'm going to apply to myself.
I do wonder what I want to choose as the slogan, though! I think that coming up with one is best approached with festina lente, because I want it to be something that applies both to me and is meaningful (or at least that kind of self-evident you take for granted but rarely implement) to others.
