Chasing Slow Book Review

Chasing Slow by Erin Loechner

This book was a breath of fresh air and a joy to read.  A book on simple living but also a lovely memoir and thoughts shared on motherhood, imperfection, and living this messy, beautiful life. 

Some favorite quotes from the book.

"People don't expire, not really.  Their traces linger far past our flat calendar squares.  Their fingerprints outlive our feeble clock's hands.  Their work gloves and work phrases do too.  The seeds they plant become trees - tall, proud - providing shelter for tomorrow, shade for today.  Legacies for a hundred years more.  And the seeds they didn't get a chance to plan?  Well, I suppose it's our turn for those."

"And we have told the truth.  I have finally told the truth that I've known but could not yet admit, that we are but fragile creatures, every last one of us.  That, on most days, we're not perfect, but we're fine, and on some days, we're not fine, but we're okay, and on a few singular days of the year:  nothing is okay, not even a little, and everything is terrible, and forever, amen.  And that this fragility, this delicate nature of being, is the life we're commissioned to celebrate."

"We can inhale buttery popcorn and a chick flick today while rationing rice with turbaned women in Haiti tomorrow.  We can fight the effects of rampant consumerism today and still purchase our mother a Christmas sweater tomorrow.  We can explore - in equal measure, if we choose - art and science.  Laughter and sorrow.  Truth and beauty.  We can lean in a lean out.  We can conquer and retreat.  We can teach and be taught.  We are not either/ors.  We are both/ands."

"I used to think the opposite of control is chaos. But it's not.  The opposite of control is surrender."

"Novelist Stewart O'Nan once wrote of this.  'You couldn't relive your life, skipping the awful parts, without losing what made it worthwhile.  You have to accept is as a whole - like the world, or the person you loved.' I am trying for this.  I am failing at this.  and I am no longer willing to call myself a hypocrite for the failings.  I am no longer willing to fell this tension and to label it something, a judge dictating the sentence of another, the sentence of oneself.  It is simply, not that simple.  The whole of it never is.  I must be all of my multifaceted self.  You must be all of your multifaceted self.  We must allow every part of us; we must learn in great form, in human messiness. And we must accept it all."