In the conventional world, fast is always revered as good.

Fast foods, pharmaceutical drugs, machinery, robots, computers, even speed dating are created as a result of the chase for such assumed goodness in the delusion of speed and spontaneity. It is as if we are always rushing for some things, some results, some actions. As if achieving everything within the shortest period of time is the main goal we should strive for everyday. Feeling full fast, getting healthy fast, earning money fast, getting into relationships fast.

One of my teachers joked that since we wanted everything fast, are we also rushing to reach death fast?

Fast is Superficial

This is an era where everyone is indulged in immediate happiness.

People are abandoning everything profound and sophisticated, including literature, philosophy, arts, ideals. Because these things are too heavy. Because these things expose us to the harsh reality of life.

Instead, people are looking for things that can numb themselves from such reality and give them quick pleasures. Short period excitement is worshipped. Values, calmness and reasonings are ridiculed.

In fastness, we become superficial.

Fast is Lazy

This is an era where everyone is lazy.

People want everything fast and offered to them on the spot. We do not even want to spend time to decipher, analyse and make choices.

In the era of algorithm, the internet can calculate our preferences based on our online activity behaviours and then directly push our favorites to us immediately when we log online. Everything we love comes to us fast. We do not even have the need to use our brains to process our likes and dislikes anymore.

In fastness, we are just growing to be lazier. And dumber.

Fast is Disconnection

This is an era where everyone is disconnected.

We like to fill up our time to the brim with multiple commitments, all in the name of wanting to be fast. So much so that we are so overwhelmed that we are forced to disengage from those around us. In response, most of us have reduced the majority of our interactions with each other to merely being transactional in nature, rather than being present enough to engage at the level of heart and soul with those that we are coming into contact with.

In reality, our distracted, transactional harried ways of relating to each other are inadequate to address the hunger of the human heart for meaningful engagement. In our hasty attempt to push the river of our lives to get more, to do more, to be more, to be faster, we are sometimes underestimating our needs for simple connection and belonging. We have forgotten how good it feels to just slow down, to look someone in the eye and just share soulfully.

In fastness, we lose connection. And become lonelier.

Book Appointment

In reality, there is no shortcut to everything valuable, precious and authentic.

Happiness, wisdom, connection, relationships, health.

Anything that we attempt to shortcut or leverage in the economic sense only brings superficiality, inauthenticity, laziness, ignorance, disconnection, isolation.

If we want happiness, we have to be honest and vulnerable with our needs and desires and then take concrete steps and actions to work towards them. One step at a time.

If we want wisdom, we have to spend time listening and asking questions to those more learned than us and truly experience what life has to offer to become wiser. One experience at a time.

If we want connection, we have to take time to build it through communication, through listening, through giving and other actions of love. One action at a time.

If we want health, we have to put in effort to eat right, sleep right, exercise right and take care of ourselves, physically and mentally. One day at a time.

In my practice of Traditional Chinese Medicine, each skill is built up through every illness treated and every patient seen. From pulse taking, tongue reading, diagnosis to the execution of the treatments. Each is polished up day by day, one patient at a time.

Similarly in the recovery from illnesses, each condition requires intricate care to get better from the root of the problem. Day by day, one needle, one herb at a time.