I'm here laughing at life after reading some articles about GPT chat and the risks of artificial intelligence in our lives. I'm not laughing for minimizing these consequences, but for realizing that the main reason for the success of the GPT chat is the speed of response. No other search engine today can provide such quick answers to such a variety of questions. The irony is that yesterday, shortly before reading these articles, I started an online therapy and meditation group, where I suggested for the week that participants slow down... yeah, it seems I'm going against the stream of technology...

I know rushing. I remember the tension of having to deal with memorizing a huge amount of information to reproduce it in the school test in a limited amount of time to get a good grade. Then the same tension to pass the entrance exam for University... for the record: it's been a while since I forgot the overwhelming majority of this information memorized by force. I remember dreaming at night with that feeling of stress and waking up scared, thinking it was a test day, even after finishing my studies.

I remember rushing my daughter when she was little. And the opportunities I missed to enter her magical world, because my adult world was so much more important...

And why such a hurry? What's out there, waiting for us so gloriously, that makes us run over everything and everyone? The rush and anxiety to achieve something up front can only speak of something we miss. And is this lack something that we will find ahead?

One of the main pejorative criticisms white people make of indigenous peoples is that they are lazy. And if laziness is synonymous with a lack of stress, that's right. But they don't lack the will to live. They lived (before having their lives invaded by white adults with “more important” lives) in such complete connection with Nature, inside and outside of them, that they knew they didn't need to be in a hurry... or waste time. When it comes to running a real danger, all the necessary adrenaline was there, triggering a whole system that protected life. And they knew that Life was abundant. Scarcity was a virus brought by the invaders. And they knew the sense of community, and as such they cared for, protected and nourished themselves with everything that human beings need in order to thrive.

How far have we gone from this connection, from this primordial knowledge, from this possibility of an abundant, relaxed and active Life, where cooperation is worth more than competition and together we are much more than the sum of individualities...

Yes, in a world where the fastest wins, here I am, happily misfit, suggesting people slow down! After all, who wants to “win”? What is success for you? For me, success is having just stopped writing to admire a yellow butterfly, very unusual around here, doing pirouettes at my window! Something inside my chest pirouetted along and I felt happy. What am I missing right now? Nothing! There are so many moments like this, when nothing is missing! We just need to slow down a little to notice them. It's like that little Sufi story about a very rich king who wanted to prove his point about human ignorance and did an experiment. He placed a bag of gold coins in the middle of a bridge and told a group of wise men in the kingdom that he would send a very poor man across the bridge and the man would not take the bag. Obviously the sages disagreed with the king, but that's exactly what happened. Seeing the man reaching the other side of the bridge without the bag of gold, he was asked if he didn't see the bag in the middle of the bridge. His answer: “as I am very used to crossing this bridge, this time I decided to do it differently and cross it with my eyes closed”!

We buy any pre-written plot for our life (soon they will be written by AI!). It's important to question which script we are following. You have to “win at life”! Win who? What? Who told you that? What does winning mean to you? You can't "fall behind"! Behind who? What? Who decides where is the front? Is that where you want to go?

Another little story: it is said that Alexander the Great met the philosopher Diogenes, who lived naked, in a barrel, without personal belongings. Having heard much about Diogenes, Alexander offered him half of his wealth if the sage would accompany him. Diogenes replied that he didn't want anything from him, just that he get out of the sun's way, as it was shading him. Alexander would have been stunned by the answer and Diogenes questioned him: where are you going? “conquer the world,” Alexander replied. “And then?” asked the sage. “Then I will rest”. “You see, you have to go and conquer the whole world in order to rest and I am already resting here and now”, replied the sage.

It's important that we stop and ask ourselves: why am I in such a hurry? Using chatGPT to take my test, create my content for social media, arrive early at opportunities… who will be “arriving early”? A manifestation of who I am? Or the manifestation of the compilation of diverse information from sources that I am unaware of offered by a language program? Where am I in this whole process? I am not getting into the issue of errors in AI information here, because my focus is on us, not on AI.

We should rather be in a hurry to slow down, I think, before the speed of disconnection swallows us once and for all and we lose our way back. This virus of scarcity that has contaminated the world needs a cure. The vaccine that I know and that works for viruses that attack our Humanity is sincere and deep questioning. Not that cynical questioning, which already has a response bias, but the questioning that is thirsty to discover the Truth. Remove from the truth all the artificial layers with which we have been covering it. After all, Truth cannot be artificial.

What is the point of the belief in scarcity? Isn't there room for everyone? Isn't there food for everyone? Aren't there resources for everyone? What we know is that believing in these premises makes us want to accumulate, to have a little more than necessary, just in case… right? And then, accumulate a little more than our extra, to leave to the children, just in case… Until accumulating becomes a habit, which becomes a pattern and, all of a sudden, boom: we have billionaires in the world! What is a billionaire good for? And why does anyone need billions of money? This economic flow that ended up in the hands of some people emptied other hands and mouths... I don't think that everyone should have the same thing, I love the fact that we are all unique and therefore have different needs. But we all need to have our needs met and we can take care of that, together.

It's like a human body, it has different organs, cells with different functions and structures. And there is a flow of life, blood, oxygen, nutrients and substances with different functions that are directed to where they are needed. When an organ needs to work harder, it calls for more blood and the entire body meets this demand. No organ is resentful because the other gained more blood and the one that gained more won't want to keep gaining infinitely more, just to accumulate, just in case... I have also never seen when one leg is injured, the other refusing to support more weight, because it is “unfair”. Just as no liver cell decides to change its mind and become a brain cell, because it is more trendy... and when this happens, the other cells recognize it as a distortion that is harmful to the body and destroy it. And when this is not possible, it becomes a disease.

And we have been propagating this social disease where each person has forgotten who they are, and thus started to follow a direction that does not support this magnificent body called Humanity. There are no winners in this equation. When the body goes bankrupt, everyone loses. Even billionaires.

So here's my tip for everyone who wants to try it: instead of rushing, I suggest this daring rebellion of slowing down. Feeling each step we take, our foot on the ground, the wind on our face, the smell and sound of things, the feeling of being alive in this world, and little by little remembering this cell that I am and what my function is in this bigger body. Spoiler: by slowing down, it is very likely that we will come into contact with that lack that I mentioned at the beginning of this text. But this is the only way to understand it and deal with it, because no race to escape this lack is successful, it accompanies us like a shadow.

The only urgency here is to recognise our humanity, in ourselves and in the collective. With no rush, and no time to waiste.