You Don't Need to Hurry

道常無為而無不為。

Nature is not in a hurry, yet everything is accomplished.

- Lao Tzu

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My favorite moments in life happen precisely when I don’t expect them to happen at all. Those were the moments when I was not in a hurry, didn’t have to rush to my next destination, and was fully present in that particular spacetime.

But that’s not how we operate these days.

Everyone is in a hurry. I can feel the urgency, the push, the tight schedule, the stress, the tension, the deadline, another deadline, the speed, the sense of wanting to achieve something, the KPIs, the FOMO, and the efficiency everywhere. They give rise to everything we take for granted in the modern world. We want to know exactly what’s going to happen. We want to move on to the next song before this song ends. We want the next-day delivery. We can’t stand any delay at the train station or the airport. We put in the extra hours to make things work. We can’t wait. Everyone is in a hurry.

But speed doesn’t matter if we are running in circles.

When we have no idea where we are going, being in a hurry doesn’t help. What we need isn’t a brain that can think faster or a computer that has more processing power. What we need is the ability to be patient with ourselves when everyone else is trying to run even faster. What we need is the wisdom to know when it’s time is to slow down. What we need is the option to control our time when everyone else is trying to draw our attention.

Good things take time. Good ideas take time. Good relationships take time.

Focus on where you are heading, and take it one step at a time.

You don’t need to hurry, yet everything will be accomplished.

See you next week.