Overworked? Overwhelmed? Maybe You’re Moving Too Fast.
I once read that an oak tree takes about a century to grow, another fifty years to thrive, and then yet another century to slowly fade away. That’s over 200 years of growth and decay, of cycles and rhythms. Over 73,000 days. That’s nearly a hundred thousand sunrises.
Can we even imagine this kind of patience?
We’re always in a hurry. I am. Running late for meetings I set, chasing opportunities I created, racing through life itself. It’s as though I’m perpetually behind, never catching up. The relentless ticking of the clock, the tightness of schedules, the ever-present deadlines.
But the clock is a relatively new invention. The calendar, even older, but still a human-made structure imposed on the infinite, unhurried turning of the earth around the sun. Nature doesn’t care about any of this. Nature doesn’t rush.
The glacier shapes mountains over eons. The river finds its way to the sea, wandering through meadows and forests, year after year. The butterfly emerges from its cocoon only when it's truly ready, not when we demand it.
And yet, here we are, checking the time.
The Rush to Do More
Yesterday, I bought a coffee from a young man who could barely keep his eyes open. He wasn’t more than twenty, but his face was already worn by exhaustion. He was juggling three courses, two jobs, and a complicated relationship. “No time,” he muttered, without prompting. “There’s just no time.”
And he’s right. Not in the way we’ve built our world.
We treat time as if it’s something to be mined, extracted, and consumed. Time management books preach how to squeeze every last drop out of our day, as though each hour is an employee in an office we can optimize. We speak of “saving” time, as if we could stash it away and pull it out when we finally get to relax.
But time doesn’t work like that. It can’t be banked. It can’t be scheduled in advance. Time can only be lived.
I came to realize this not from any self-help book, but from watching a tortoise. A friend had one, a slow-moving creature that had been around for millions of years, moving at a pace dictated by nature, not the clock. It wasn’t in a hurry. It didn’t rush. It moved at exactly the pace it needed to. And in its slowness, there was something perfect.
The Parable of the Bamboo
There’s a tale, perhaps apocryphal, about Chinese bamboo that perfectly illustrates this point. For the first four years after planting, there’s no visible growth. Nothing. The gardener waters it, protects it, tends to it, but above the ground, it’s just empty soil.
Then, in the fifth year, it shoots up ninety feet in a matter of weeks.
But did the bamboo grow in those six weeks, or over the past four years?
The bamboo’s growth didn’t start when it finally shot up. It was happening all along, just out of sight. Beneath the soil, it was developing an intricate root system that would support its sudden and incredible growth spurt.
Nature doesn’t show its work. It doesn’t post progress reports. It doesn’t need social media to prove its worth. It just does what it needs to do, whether anyone’s watching or not.
The Cult of Productivity
Today, we are all part of the "hustle culture." A world obsessed with doing more, achieving more, and being more. There are books, courses, apps, and gurus telling us how to maximize every second of our day. "Wake up at 4 AM! Optimize your sleep cycle! Crush your goals!"
But nature laughs at this. The tree doesn’t grow faster because the forest is behind schedule. The bee doesn’t visit more flowers just because there’s a deadline. The tide doesn’t roll in with more urgency because it’s the end of the fiscal year.
Nature simply is, doing what it does in its own time.
Time Is Not Money
We hear it constantly: “Time is money.” But time is not money. Money is a human invention, a fictional system we all agree to believe in. You can’t buy time, no matter how rich you become. You can’t store it, or invest it, or save it for a rainy day. All you can do is spend it, and you’re spending it right now, reading these words.
The real question isn’t about how to gain more time, but how to inhabit the time we have.
Slow Down, Find Your Pace
I’ve been trying to experiment with this: moving at a pace that feels natural, not dictated by external demands. Saying no to urgency that isn’t real. Realizing that many so-called emergencies are simply the result of poor planning disguised as pressure.
It’s not easy. The world doesn’t make it easy. Deadlines pile up, emails flood in, and demands never stop. But I’ve found that when I slow down and align my pace with what feels right — my natural pace — the quality of my work improves. And the quality of my life improves too.
Ironically, I often get more done.
Not because I’m speeding through tasks, but because I’m no longer burning energy trying to outrun time. I’m not making mistakes that I have to fix later. I’m not exhausted from the constant need to hurry.
Like the bamboo, I’m building roots.
The Paradox of Time
Time is a strange thing. Mystics and physicists alike agree that time, as we know it, is an illusion. The past and the future only exist in our minds. In reality, there is only now.
Nature understands this. The bird singing on my windowsill isn’t worried about tomorrow. The wave crashing on the shore isn’t anxious about the next tide. They exist fully in this moment, without concern for what’s next.
We humans, though, spend much of our time either dragging the past behind us or anticipating the future. Rarely do we just exist in the present.
And yet, when we do manage to live fully in the now — in deep moments of flow, in crisis, in joy, in deep meditation — time seems to stretch. We step outside its limitations.
The moments in my life that have felt the most timeless are the ones when I’ve forgotten about the clock.
So, Why Are You Rushing?
This isn’t an accusation. It’s a question for all of us, myself included.
What exactly are we rushing toward? What’s waiting at the end of all this urgency? What’s the prize at the finish line?
We rush toward deadlines, toward achievements, toward vacations, toward the weekend. Always toward something else. Always trying to get to a place that isn’t here.
And when we get there? We find something else to hurry toward.
The oak tree doesn’t rush to become an oak. It grows slowly, ring by ring, through rain and sun, through the changing seasons, for as long as it takes.
The river doesn’t hurry to reach the sea. It meanders, following the path of least resistance, shaping itself to the land.
What if we did the same? What if we could trust the unfolding of our lives, just as nature trusts its own?
I’m not saying we should stop trying or working. The oak puts in great effort to push through rock and soil. The river works tirelessly to flow toward the sea. But neither of them rushes. They don’t panic. They don’t exhaust themselves wondering if they’re doing enough, fast enough.
If I were to live my life again, I would rush less. I would trust more. I’d remember that the universe took billions of years to get me here, and it will continue unfolding long after I’m gone.
There’s no need to rush.
