An innovator (a sort of): Christopher Richards - Part I

Aquí su sitio web: Slowdown

De la introducción a si mismo:

"I make my living in the real world by ghostwriting business books.

I grew up in a sleepy village outside of Oxford in England. I went to art school in Winchester where I studied fine art and philosophy. Later I moved to New York. Today, I live in the San Francisco Bay Area with my wife Lynnette.

My interest in slow started while still an art student. It was my first visit to America and I'd come for a month-long stay in the winter of 1976. I arrived in California after a long flight from London. The fare was cheap. The aircraft was old. They say you get what you pay for. The galley door fell off and the oxygen masks popped out of the ceiling when the plane bounced down in Canada for refueling.

California was immediately captivating: stunning vistas, palm trees, sunshine. What struck me was the emptiness of the landscape. There only seemed to be Europeans visiting the national parks. Where were the Americans?

I had no idea Americans worked such long hours. Wasn’t California supposed to be laid back? It’s a common mistake to think that other cultures are like your own. Only after working in the corporate world and running a company did I understand what Josef Pieper referred to as The Total World of Work in his book, Leisure: The Basis of Culture.

It was this book that was my impulse (if impulse is not too strong a word) for writing about slow. I found the book quite by chance in a bookstore on College Avenue in Oakland. Pieper’s point is that one can become so immersed in work that nothing else matters. Total work destroys culture. Total work saps our energy. There is no time for interiority.



Leisure is a form of that stillness that is necessary preparation for accepting reality; only the person who is still can hear, and whoever is not still, cannot hear.
Pieper, Josef. Leisure, the Basis of Culture. South Bend, Indiana: Translation, St. Augustine’s Press, 1998. p 31.


This led me to investigate the subject. I started to write about work-life balance, but at first found my tone to be preachy. There’s a big difference between knowing what to do, and actually doing it. Slowdownnow.org became a place to find my voice as a humorist.

Slow is a serious subject, even if its treatment isn’t. Humor opens us to being receptive. Not everything can be treated with humor. However play and humor are the elements of creativity. The world is in constant flux. Change is rapid. We don’t know what will happen next. We need to challenge our assumptions. We need wisdom to cope with change, and wisdom doesn't happen overnight.

Educational guru, Sir Ken Robinson, says, creativity is as important to us in this century as literacy was in the past. It’s a survival skill. Whether designing a life to include a personal world outside of the demands of commerce, or thinking through problems in new ways, creativity needs to emerge from a place of gestation, rest, flexibility, and balance.

I am currently writing a third children's book. My Children's book website for ages 5-9 is here."

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Yo diría que este modo de vivir propuesto por Mr. Richards logra que lo tomemos en serio sin tener que ser serio a la manera usual, a saber, trabajando hasta, literalmente,

m o r i r
d e l,
y
e n
e l,
c a n s a n c i o

:-) :-) :-) (I like it)

Una estrategia para, sino vencerla, al menos timarla por un rato, a la muerte...