Pace has a Cost

I’ve always lived with a kind of forward momentum stitched into my bones....a steady, almost instinctive push toward whatever’s next. Not chaos, not panic, not rushing for the sake of it, but purposeful speed. Efficiency. Movement. Progress. It’s how I’ve built everything that matters to me.....my life, my career, my family, my home, my health, my sense of identity. It’s how I’ve survived every season that demanded strength.

But every strength has a shadow.

Lately I’ve found myself looping a song called Mountain to Move by Nick Mulvey. It’s a simple song, but there’s something in it.....a kind of soft urgency that feels like a reminder, or maybe a warning.....and it’s been sitting heavy in my chest. It makes me feel like life is happening around me and I’m somehow not inside it fully. Like there’s something important I’m meant to notice, but I’m moving too quickly to catch it.

Then Clare said something today that cracked it open.

She’d taken the boys to a comicon, one of those places where time stops for kids, where they trade Pokémon cards and wander slowly from shelf to shelf, soaking everything in without agenda. I told her I wish I’d gone, and she replied gently, without accusation, “It’s hard doing those things with you. You rush us. You walk in, look around, get what you want, and it feels like we have to leave because you’re done.”

It wasn’t said to wound.
But it landed because it was true.

When I walk into a place, I move with a kind of internal clarity.....I see things quickly, I assess, I decide, and then, without speaking, my energy tells everyone that the mission is complete. I don’t intend it. I don’t mean to pull people out of their experience. But I can see now that I do. My tempo becomes the tempo of the room. My urgency becomes the atmosphere.

That’s the part I hadn’t realised.

I’ve always been someone who chases life.....new skills, new goals, new experiences, new challenges. I imagine something, get the spark, and then I pursue it with precision and pace. That’s my wiring. It’s why my life is full and varied. It’s why I’ve done so much. It’s why I’m still physically capable at 53 and still hungry for more. But that wiring has a cost.

The cost is absorption.
The cost is texture.
The cost is the small moments that don’t have a purpose, but hold meaning.

I’ve lived most of my life in what I now recognise as Hunter Mode....scanning, assessing, achieving, moving. It’s brilliant for responsibility, leadership, building, adventure, and anything that requires decisive action. But it’s terrible for lingering. For wonder. For drifting. For letting others set the pace. For existing inside a moment without trying to complete it.

Presence… that’s the part I’ve never really trained.

And lately I’ve realised I’m not chasing life because I’m empty.
I’m chasing it because I’m full.....full of hunger, curiosity, drive, passion.
But sometimes that intensity makes me move too quickly past the moments that don’t need to be conquered or improved or shaped.....they just need to be lived.

The boys know how to do that naturally. They slip into a moment effortlessly. Time bends for them. Clare knows it too....she can let a moment breathe in a way I envy. They aren’t in a hurry unless something is pulling them. They’re present in ways I’ve never been.

And here’s the truth I keep circling:
I’m not sure I’ve ever truly understood what it feels like to drift.
To just be in a moment without scanning it, without shaping it, without trying to pull something from it.

In my mind’s eye, that kind of stillness looks peaceful, nourishing....something I think I’d genuinely enjoy if I knew how to let myself do it. But I don’t know how. I’ve never lived like that. Stillness has always felt like wasted time, and that belief runs deeper than I realised.

Maybe that’s why Clare’s comment landed the way it did.
Maybe that’s why that song won’t leave me alone.
It’s not that I’m doing something wrong....it’s that life is tapping me on the shoulder saying, “There’s another way to feel this.”

And now that Im starting to see it....really see it....Im wondering if this is the next thing I’m meant to learn. Not from pushing myself harder or adding another skill to my list, but from watching the people around me who move differently through the world.

Maybe presence is just another form of mastery....one I’ve never attempted.

Maybe I can learn to sit in a moment that doesn’t have an end point, a purpose, or a measurable outcome.
Maybe I can learn to let time unfold instead of trying to outrun it.
Maybe I can walk into a place with no agenda and let the experience decide the pace.

Perhaps, now that I’m becoming aware, I can learn something else from my kids and from Clare.....and that is how to be present… really present. Present in moments that don’t require strength or direction or a decision. Moments that don’t need conquering.

Just moments that need me still.

I think I’d like to try that.