The world is always in a hurry: and those that hurry look at me with pity. Slow, they say. Primitive. Lazy. Always getting left behind. They fail to see that I’m an advanced being with a metabolism of miraculous economy that makes for a life of profound meditation.
Monday
Today I hung from a branch. Tomorrow I will hang from a branch, very probably the same one. Yesterday I hung from a branch, and in the course of the day I moved to this one. Dull? I’m up here in the canopy looking at the sky, splinters of sunlight filtering through the leaves. I’m in heaven while everyone else is dashing past oblivious.
Tuesday
Have you never considered the virtues of slowness? It makes you invisible. Ocelots and harpy eagles hunt by sight. They look for movement: but my subtle creep attracts no eyes. Speed? I can make 13 feet a minute, nearer 15 when I’m in a hurry. Speed is for losers.
Wednesday
I live in an unending buffet. I’m in the rainforest and I eat leaves. Most of my day is free for contemplating the vastness of the universe and the smallness of individual life. It’s not a high-energy diet and I don’t need very much of it: I digest as slow as I move. Two-thirds of my bodyweight is the contents of my stomach, and it might take a month to get from one end to the other.
Related articles:
Today I hung from a branch. Tomorrow I will hang from a branch, very probably the same one
Today I hung from a branch. Tomorrow I will hang from a branch, very probably the same one
Thursday
I’m not only part of an ecosystem: I’m an ecosystem myself. My hair grows in the opposite direction of every other mammal, but then I live most of my life upside down. Each hair is grooved: it can support a colony of algae, so I grow my own camouflage. The algae attract insects: they live on me and around me and I look on them with benevolence. I am like a kindly god: a thought that guides my mediations as I hang motionless or make my leisured progress to another branch.
Newsletters
Choose the newsletters you want to receive
View more
For information about how The Observer protects your data, read our Privacy Policy
Friday
Big day. I went down to the ground. It’s difficult and it’s dangerous: I’m even slower on the ground than I am in the trees. I make this trip every ten days or so: I dig a hole and I crap in it. I’m often asked why I don’t just let go from the treetops and I have no answer. It just wouldn’t be right. It’s an ancient tradition of slothkind and it would be wrong to abandon it.
Saturday
My fellow sloths don’t play a big part in daily life, but when you spend as much time as I do thinking you can see the big picture. Other mammals jump to conclusions: I creep hand-over-hand to the right answer. And every now and then that’s a female sloth. Ha! And it’s the one thing we do quickly. A minute from beginning to end: but quite a minute... Out there in the forest, there’ll be one, two, maybe even more off my offspring. Hanging out and contemplating the infinite void.
Lifespan Say ten years
Eating habits The eternal salad
Hobbies Meditation
Sexual preferences Very slow ladies
Photograph by Sergi Reboredo/Getty