I'm Not Rushing
Lessons in Going Slow to Go Fast
Last week, on my Artist Date, I decided I wanted to go for a walk to get some tacos. I have been experimenting with eating a little bit of meat again and noticing how it feels in my body. In the last several months, the practice of intuitive eating has been a good companion for me, encouraging me to slow down and really get in touch with what my body is actually asking for rather than just eating because it’s lunch time. This practice has been an extension of what Naomi Ortiz refers to as “critical feeling” in their book Sustaining Spirit. Instead of my FitBit telling me I need to get 250 steps once an hour and tracking my 64oz of water intake, I get the chance to check in with myself somatically and learn my own internal cues about what I need. Does my mouth feel dry? My tongue thick in my mouth? Drink some water. Is my lower back aching, are my legs going to sleep, or am I fidgeting in my chair a lot? Move my body.
So, I took myself on a walk to get some tacos. I live about equidistant between two taco shops (the privilege of living in the southwestern part of the United States, I know). One is a renovated Taco Bell-turned gyro place-turned back to a local taco chain that serves tasty food fast. The other is a local landmark that specializes in breakfast burritos but offers a nice enough sit down experience. To extend the luxury of the time, I chose the sitdown place.
If you’ve never eaten in a restaurant alone (or dread it and dissociate through it as much as possible), let me tell you it makes for incredible people watching. The group of seniors from the long term care facility next door out for lunch together. The family lunch where the new girlfriend was meeting the grandparents for the first time. The business man eating alone in a corner with his back to the wall where he could see everyone. It’s a fascinating study in the humanity that, through a shuffle of the cosmic cards, wound up here together at 1pm on a Saturday.
I’ve been to this taco place enough - we survived on their breakfast burritos and flavored lattes from the cattycorner coffee shop while my mom was dying and no one had the wherewithal to cook - to recognize the owner. She has beautiful salt and pepper hair and a musical accent and is much more comfortable running expo than register but she will do what she has to do. It seems to be a family affair - the next generation waiting tables and tending bar.
They aren’t slammed today, exactly - there are some empty tables - but they do a robust to-go business and they’re on their toes. An older Black man is waiting by the counter to make an order and the owner is running, saying “I’ll be right with you” as she flies by to deliver menus to a waiting table in the classic customer service intervention that says “I see you and will circle back, promise.” She has a few more things to do before she can get back to the register and acknowledges him every couple passes, the stress in her voice pushing its tone a little higher every time until he directly offers her the grace it’s apparent she’s badly in need of.
“I’m not rushing.”
He’s got his hands in his pockets, enjoying a leisurely Saturday afternoon getting tacos in his tracksuit pants. He’s not pressed. His shoulders are decidedly not around his ears and I felt mine relax as I saw her take the deep breath he’d given her permission for. In three words, he communicated to her “I see how hard you’re working. You don’t have to feel like you’re feeling around me.” He created an island of peace for her that allowed her to come back to her center.
It was a moment of grace I was privileged to witness and his words have been echoing in my head for over a week now. I’m not rushing, I remind myself, even when the to-do list is dauntingly long. I’m not rushing, even when I’m running late. I’m not rushing, even and especially when my body disagrees. It’s a powerful sentiment. Just the thought puts me in touch with my breath, loosens my chest, and unwinds the noose around my belly.
I’m not rushing.
For years, I’ve admired the practice of handlettering. Though my handwriting is passble-to-pretty, I have long thought calligraphy to be beyond my ability. I’m too messy, too inconsistent. It’s just not for me, even though part of me has always loved it. Part of my growth in the last couple of weeks has been looking up things I’m curious about just to find out a little bit more. The last curiosity was tasseography or the art of reading tea leaves. I was looking at the sediment in my teacup and got to wondering which took me to YouTube which led to a cursory dive into a world I knew nothing about except for that one scene in Outlander. Though it’s not a practice of mine, I now have a bit more of an understanding of how it works and an appreciation for the art of seeing.
Sometimes, the whims lead you somewhere important. For a reason I’ve forgotten now, which may have been just as simple as “because I wanted to”, I looked up a handlettering tutorial. I found this video by Sarah Ensign and in the six minutes I hadn’t spent before, I learned the (extreme) basics of handlettering. Specifically, in this and another video, she broke down lettering into strokes and taught a small amout of what’s called ‘faux calligraphy’, which essentially amounts to making sure the downstrokes are thicker than the upstrokes. A letter is made up of component strokes and those are what you learn to put together into letters, rather than learning to make the letter itself. There is a difference between lettering and cursive writing, something no one had ever told me before. That difference? You lift your pen between strokes. She offered this wisdom:
“I like to pause between strokes so I can breathe.”
In other words, I’m not rushing.
In three very different experiences, the same wisdom came forward. Slow down. Act with care. Be present. Tune in. Feel your body. Extend that invitation to others and watch them soften in real time.
In a world that values speed and efficiency, slowing down and being with is an act of resistance. Not rushing allows us to act with integrity, in tune with our needs and intuitions, and more in sync with what is rather than ruled by our most reactive selves. If we can find this island of slowness within our own nervous systems like the man in the taco shop, we can offer others that same grace and invite them into a moment of restoration.
And here’s the kicker which is a truth community organizers have known and offered back as wisdom over and over again. Slowing down produces better outcomes. Go slow to go fast. Move at the speed of trust.
Who helps you slow down? Who invites you in to an island of stillness? Who points you back to your breath and helps you listen to your inner knowing? Those are the people to build something steady with, something that will last.