Why Walking Slowly Feels So Uncomfortable

When did slowing down start feeling like falling behind?

I was walking through a beautiful little town the other morning — quiet streets, flowers spilling from balconies, the smell of fresh bread drifting out of a bakery I hadn't noticed before. An elderly gentleman sat outside a café reading yesterday's newspaper, as if time itself had decided to join him for coffee. It was the kind of scene you'd normally stop for.

Instead, I caught myself speeding up. Not because I was late. Not because I had anywhere important to be. Just because walking slowly, in that moment, felt somehow wrong.

That stopped me properly, right there on the pavement. When exactly had I learned that moving quickly meant living well? Who taught me that every walk needed a destination? And, more uncomfortably still — when did I start rushing through beautiful moments without noticing I was doing it?

I think most of us are running a race we never officially signed up for. We hurry through supermarkets, rush conversations, eat while answering emails, listen while already composing our reply. Even our holidays get itineraries: breakfast by eight, museum by ten, lunch at one, photos before sunset. We come home exhausted from relaxing. Somewhere along the way, productivity quietly replaced presence, and because everyone around us seems just as busy, it starts to feel entirely normal.

There's something worth naming here about why busyness has such a grip on us. Psychologists have observed that being busy often gives people something beyond a sense of achievement — it gives them an identity. Ask someone how they are, and "busy" comes back almost as a badge of honour, as if exhaustion were proof that a life matters. It's a strange trade, when you look at it closely, because so many of the moments we actually treasure — watching waves, listening to birds, holding someone's hand, a chapter of a book that quietly changes how we think — would never make it onto a to-do list. And yet those are the ones we remember years later.

I think of a street musician I nearly walked past in a European city a few years ago. A violinist was playing in a small square, children were dancing, tourists had stopped to watch. I glanced over, smiled, and kept going — I had somewhere to be. About twenty metres on, I stopped and asked myself, honestly, where exactly I was going that mattered more than this. The answer was embarrassing: nowhere in particular. So I turned back, found a bench, and sat for twenty minutes just listening. I still remember that music clearly. I couldn't tell you a single thing I did for the rest of that day. Sometimes the moment we almost skip past becomes the one we never forget.

It's worth saying plainly: slowness isn't laziness, whatever a hurried culture tells us. Neuroscience actually points the other way. When the mind isn't locked onto the next task, a network in the brain known as the default mode network becomes more active — the network tied to creativity, reflection, memory and insight. Some of your best thinking happens precisely when you're not trying to think at all. It's why solutions turn up in the shower, in the garden, on a quiet walk, staring out of a train window. The brain doesn't switch off when we slow down. It switches to a different kind of work.

By midlife, most of us have spent decades proving ourselves — building careers, raising families, paying mortgages, meeting deadlines, looking after everyone else. We've become genuinely, impressively good at being efficient. The harder question is whether we've become equally good at being present, because those two things aren't the same skill. Efficiency builds a successful life. Presence is what lets you actually enjoy it once it's built.

I tested this on myself one afternoon, on a park bench, without a phone, without a book, without pretending to wait for anyone. Just sitting. At first it felt faintly ridiculous — surely I should be doing something, checking something, answering someone. Then, gradually, the world got louder. Birds I'd never noticed. Children inventing a game nearby. Leaves moving in the breeze. An elderly couple walking hand in hand. Jasmine on the air. Nothing extraordinary happened, except that I finally arrived where my body had already been the whole time.

Sociologists have a name for the wider pattern: a culture of acceleration. Technology promised to save us time, and somehow many of us have never felt more rushed by it. We answer emails in queues, listen to podcasts while exercising, watch television while scrolling our phones — our attention broken into smaller and smaller pieces, until fragmented attention starts to look like a fragmented life. Maybe that's why slow things feel almost rebellious now: reading an actual paper book, cooking from scratch, watching a sunset through to its last colour, walking without counting the steps. Doing one thing, completely, on purpose.

One of the quieter fears many women carry into midlife is the sense of being somehow behind — behind financially, behind professionally, behind everyone else. Social media rarely helps: we're shown other people's highlight reels on a loop, someone starting a business, someone climbing a mountain, someone renovating a dream kitchen, someone looking twenty years younger than they are. Comparison tells us to speed up. Experience tells you something different — that life was never actually a race. Flowers don't compete with each other. They simply bloom when their season arrives. Perhaps we were never behind at all. Perhaps we were just looking sideways instead of forward.

Here's something practical to try this week, if you're willing. Reclaim ten minutes. Walk somewhere pleasant, leave your phone behind, don't count your steps, don't put a podcast in your ears, don't stop to take a photograph. Just walk, slowly, and notice five things you've genuinely never noticed before. Then sit with one question: what have I been walking past in my own life, simply because I was moving too fast to see it?

I've come to believe one of the real luxuries available to us in midlife isn't more money, more holidays, or even more time. It's the courage to stop hurrying. Because when we do, we notice, we listen, we breathe, we reconnect — and somewhere between one slow step and the next, we tend to rediscover the woman who'd been patiently waiting for us to catch up. Slowing down was never about doing less. It was always about finally living more of what's already there.

So tomorrow, if you can, leave the house ten minutes earlier than you need to. Walk as though you're not trying to get anywhere. Let the journey itself deserve your attention. Notice how different the world feels the moment you stop asking "how quickly can I get there?" and start asking "what might I discover if I don't rush?"

Coming Next in The Unexpected Psychology of Midlife

The Hidden Meaning of Your Favourite Mug

Why do we all have one cup that somehow makes the tea taste better? It isn't really about the mug. It's about memory, comfort, identity — and the surprising psychology hiding inside our most everyday rituals.