The importance of living slowly: reflections from Columbia

Elsie Garrett reflects on her time volunteering in Colombia.

During late December, I made the decision to book my flight from Bogotá, the capital of Colombia, to San José in Costa Rica, two hours of north-east travel and one hour of time difference. 

Upon landing, an airport worker, seeing me alone with my backpack, pulled me aside and asked me in a low voice where I was travelling to. She warned me – rather ominously, in retrospect – not to trust anyone (no confíes en nadie). I promised I would be careful, and true to my word, chose to take an Uber. It was six dollars more expensive than the bus, and still not legal in Costa Rica. The driver told me I would pretend to be a friend of his daughter if the police stopped the car.

I had arranged to volunteer at a hostel in La Fortuna, a town framed by the mountains of Arenal, and a volcano whose summit rarely dipped below the clouds. The sun had set, and my phone battery gradually seeped away. Without music or distractions, I looked out the window at the dark night of this unknown world and felt the warm breeze of the Costa Rican countryside, framed in my imagination by tropical leaves that wafted larger than life, grass that stood twice as high as me and unknown insects that swarmed, buzzing a song that lingered amongst the upwardly twisting pathways of the mountain road. 

The first bus stopped in a town unknown to me, that held the name of Ciudad Quesada. Fellow passengers gradually drifted away, transforming into nothing more than dark shadows silently gathering their possessions and wandering on. I was reminded of a scene from a Ghibli movie, with the silence and slowness of it all. Unsure of my surroundings, I clutched my bag and faced forwards, walking on. A shop owner, closing for the night, pointed me in the direction of the final bus I would take that evening. I paid the driver two thousand colones, and by the time it neared midnight, I found myself in Fortuna. 

My time in Fortuna remains prominent in my memory in the way that it gave me the chance to create a routine grounded by living slowly. This was a luxury I hadn’t yet been able to incorporate into my rushed uni lifestyle, nor my life before that. My days in Costa Rica consisted of waking softly and sleeping early, savouring mornings, and going about my day restfully. I made coffee for the guests, and we drank it gently, mindfully, paying even the smallest actions the attention they deserved. Everything was done tenderly yet deliberately. I washed the guests’ clothes with care. I ate simple meals of beans and rice, giving my attention to every moment. I would take walks each day in my free time - following straight country roads for hours, until I could follow them no more, at which point I would turn around and walk right the way back. I read Jack Kerouac with a kind of absorbed fascination, underlining phrases that I wanted burned into my mind to illuminate my own life. 

Much of the time, I would leave my phone on a shelf in my room. What surprised me was that - even just from that physical distance - I noticed changes in myself.

The other volunteers and I would often go to a nearby river and meditate. We would breathe in and out as deeply as we could, for five minutes, ten, fifteen. When we opened them again, the world seemed still. We decided how slow everything really was! It had only been us making it so fast. The sounds of the river seemed to take on a greater, more emphatic meaning, becoming musical and metaphoric, speaking of the constant churning and changing of life’s events. The colours of the sunlight streaming in through the trees seemed majestic, and our own everyday lives and place in the world more profound.  

Much of the time, I would leave my phone on a shelf in my room. What surprised me was that - even just from that physical distance - I noticed changes in myself. At a base level, I felt calmer and more content. I wasn’t so plagued by worries for the future, nor dwellings of the past. All that existed was what was right there in front of me. It seemed that my own actions and words took on more meaning and significance than before, and I began to realise the control that I could take back – a control that I hadn’t even realised I was missing. By simply leaving social media on a shelf in my room I turned my attention easily to the reality of my own, very current, tangible life – and the result was nothing but gratifying. It seemed to me that this small, rectangular device – so insignificant in appearance – had demanded from me a hold that was far more substantial than I had previously appreciated. From afar, I now observed the reality of the never-ending abyss of endless information and news, that flickered relentlessly through the mind of the consumer, igniting opposing sparks and leaving an endless trail of chaos in its wake. The mind absorbed a multitude of sensations, stories and slices of the lives of people it would never meet and information it would never need. Distracting us from the present, the real and tangible things around us were being replaced by a blur of artificial lights, lasting mere seconds before being replaced by the following one.

Awareness of this seemed to flip a switch in my mind. The reality of social media’s ever-raging power was apparent to me, yet the liberty and autonomy I gained back without it seemed to yield opportunity for an equally immense power. Freedom from it, even partial, began to give me a notably increased attention span, better sleep quality and higher sense of presence, energy and drive in my days. Elements of my individual identity and actions were no longer overshadowed by a six-inch screen, and I felt my mind expanding amidst a new-found slowness and peace. 

Of course, the steps to attaining this peace are far simpler in theory, when written down on an unassuming to-do list or typed paradoxically into the notes app. The real world doesn’t consist of daily nature walks and meditating by rivers. Those weeks in Fortuna were a dip into a life that isn’t mine to live, yet they are what showed me a tranquil way of living that I could perhaps navigate towards myself. Regardless of the endless succession of life’s own ebbs and flows, the awareness that I gained from Fortuna is mine to keep, and the slowness and mindfulness mine to practice, replicate and share in my own life.

Published 21 April 2025