Slowing your pace can mean so many things, but I am talking about slowing the pace at which you walk. There are two gifts I want to talk about… the gift it can be for someone to slow their pace to match yours, and the gift that slowing your pace gives to yourself. My health has declined in the last few years and I am in pretty poor physical shape. One of the issues I have been facing is weight gain and low iron levels, both of which give me shortness of breath as I move through my day. I am audibly out of breath just walking a flight of stairs and it has to be a pretty slow pace for me to walk and talk without breathlessness. This can be so embarrassing. Sometimes I get anxiety when a fit friend invites me for lunch to a place they plan to walk to. I was actually nervous heading into my recent vacation for fear that I couldn’t keep up. It is a multi-level fear for me…a fear of being embarrassed, a fear of frustrating the person I am with, a fear of having to ask to slow the pace, a fear of huffing and puffing trying to keep up…or, and possibly hardest of all, the fear of a conversation around why I am struggling so much…none of these things are easy for me. Which brings me to the first gift, the gift of someone slowing their pace to match yours. I never would have known what a kindness this can be had I not had been dealing with these issues, so I want to make clear there is no judgement here for you fast walkers that may be reading this! We all have our own natural rhythm and I hope to one day have the ability to clip along with you again! I only encourage anyone reading this to slow your pace if you find the person you are with is falling behind. Those few feet can be so lonely when you are trailing behind someone, and us slow movers can be such delightful company:) The other gift I have found, being relatively new to this slower pace, is that walking slowly really opens up the opportunities for you to see the world and be present. My slow pace allows me to breathe in the world around me. I notice that the leaves are changing, I have time to pause and take a picture. To me, it is the difference between “walking to get someplace” and “being on a journey.” My young daughter enjoys a slow pace, and on our holiday she would often say “you’re rushing me!” to remind us to slow a bit for her...a reminder that I appreciated. Sometimes in life we focus so much on getting to where we are going as fast as we can get there that we miss out on some real beauty along the way.
-Amanda
