I have spent my whole life walking fast. Like most people in the city: in a hurry, phone in hand, head somewhere else.
A couple of weeks ago I tried something different. I went out for a walk with no destination and no music, and I forced myself to go slowly. Not at a fake contemplative pace, but at a natural rhythm, the one the body asks for when no one is rushing it.
It was hard at first. There was a little voice telling me I was wasting my time, that I could go faster, that it was pointless.
But by the third day, I started seeing things I had not seen in years. The way the light passes through the trees at the end of the afternoon. The smell of the field after the dew. A dog that looked at me as if to say: finally, someone at my pace.
Walking slowly is a way of telling the body: you are here, you are not just passing through. It is a meditation without a mat, a therapy without an appointment.
I have not completely stopped being in a hurry. But now I know that slowness exists, that it is mine if I choose it, and that the world does not end because I slow down.