Slow down you move to fast

The Retune Blog - 28th July 2023

Photo by Joe Lewandowski on Unsplash

The summer is always a great time to slow down and recharge the batteries of life. But is this feeling that we need to recharge an indication that we are living life too fast? The opening line of Simon and Garfunkel’s The 59th Street Bridge Song (aka Feelin’ Groovy) seems to have something to say about this:

Slow down, you move too fast. You got to make the morning last.

Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel’s home town of New York has a notoriously hectic pace of life. And the 59th Street Bridge is a perfect example of the vibe of the city in that it's said it’s  noisy and that the metal plates you walk on vibrate as the traffic zooms past. People say that crossing the bridge gives you a sense of excitement and danger. And perhaps this is where our love of the fast paced life originates, a desire to ‘really’ feel alive. Yet, the song offers us a different narrative:

Hello, lamppost, whatcha knowing? I've come to watch your flowers growing … I'm dappled and drowsy and ready to sleep. Let the morning time drop all its petals on me.

Talking about the song, Simon said that he had just returned to the States from some time in England and was grappling with his new found fame back home. He hit a patch of writing some quite depressing songs when one morning he walked across the 59th Street Bridge and felt a sense of time just hanging. This slowing in his experience of time led to him declaring:

Life, I love you. All is groovy

I can relate to this in the sense that I love the hustle and bustle of everyday life. Yet, when I take a bit more time out in the summer there is something really life affirming about just slowing down and really being present and noticing the world around me.

This is very much what I take from the concepts of mindfulness, a practice intended to help us become present in the moment we are living in, not fretting about the past or being anxious about the future. In mindfulness there is a radical acceptance that things right now are as they are, and that life can be appreciated for what it is. There is no need for striving, rushing for excitement, or regretting the past. We can experience the sometimes almost overwhelming fullness of the present moment, and that is enough. And I think it is this that Paul Simon experienced when he crossed the bridge the morning he wrote this song.

If you’d like to find out a bit more about mindfulness, why not check out our free mindfulness resources in our LIfe Garage.