Most of us can remember hearing it at some point.
‘Hurry up.’
‘Come on.’
‘You’re taking forever.’
We hear those messages so often as children that we rarely stop to question them. Somewhere along the way, speed became associated with success, productivity and competence while slowness quietly became something to grow out of.
I certainly absorbed that lesson.
As a child, I could happily spend an hour eating a meal. I loved getting lost in my own thoughts. I wasn’t always interested in every conversation happening around me because my inner world felt rich enough on its own.
People often laughed and called me slow and I began to believe I needed to change.
I learnt to eat faster, to move quicker, to multitask, to keep up. Like many people, I became better at living according to the pace around me than listening to the pace within me.
For years, I never questioned it.
Then, I caught myself saying the same words to my kids.
‘Hurry up’
The words came out so naturally that they almost passed unnoticed.
How many of the messages we pass on were never really ours to begin with?
We live in a culture that celebrates being busy. Lunch is eaten while answering emails. Walks become an opportunity to listen to a podcast. Holidays become carefully planned itineraries. Rest often comes with the pressure to make it productive.
There is nothing wrong with enjoying a full diary or moving quickly if that’s what suits you.
The problem begins when we believe there is only one acceptable pace.
Some people genuinely feel energised by constant activity while others don’t. Our internal rhythm matters.
Neither is right or wrong.
The difficulty comes when we spend years overriding the signals our body is giving us because we’ve convinced ourselves we should be moving faster.
So now, I’ve been trying to do something that once came naturally.
To sit and enjoy my lunch instead of treating it as another task to complete.
Noticing when my mind is already racing ahead and gently bring it back to the present moment.
To allow summer to unfold instead of filling every day with activities.
It turns out slow was never the problem.