Slowing Down in Urgent Times

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July 22, 2023

a project of ServiceSpace

Slowing down is not a function of speed. It is a function of awareness, and I don't want to make awareness a mental construct. It's a function of presence.

- Bayo Akomolafe -

Slowing Down in Urgent Times

"To slow down in times of crisis--times that in so many ways require action on all fronts--can seem counterintuitive. We are constantly met with pressures to achieve more, act faster and be better. Dr. Bayo Akomolafe disagrees. Urgent times, he urges, call for quiet; for rest and respite. Instead of ramping up, we must surrender, and wait to witness the transformative potential of stillness. Dr. Akomolafe is a writer, poet, teacher, and public intellectual, whose groundbreaking philosophies draw on his roots with the Yoruba people to look beyond perceived certainties and obfuscate binary thinking. The first step toward emancipatory wholeness is finding comfort in the unknowable, and embracing bewilderment and wonder. "In pursuing justice, we're reinforcing the system we're trying to escape. In trying to climb out of the pits that we've dug for ourselves, the pits become resilient. In trying to escape the prison, the prison gains its form. So, in a very critical sense, we are in a crisis of form," said Dr. Akomolafe. "We need trickster approaches, we need ways of dancing away, or dancing to, fugitive spaces; dancing to sanctuaries where we can shape-shift. Grieving, mourning, even allowing ourselves to partake in pleasurable activities in the face of the storm." For the Wild founder Ayana Young speaks with Bayo Akomolofe on the generative powers of stillness and fugitivity. { read more }