Not Made For The Rush: Navigating the Space Between Pace and Belonging in a Fast World

I know, intellectually, that healing - both personal and/or collective - only comes through community. I also understand that utopian visions of community allow for different tempos. But that doesn’t account for the real world level of commitment required to resist systems that not only reward speed and action but make survival dependent on them. It takes daily, deliberate effort to maintain your pace when fear, survival instincts, or the muscle memory of urgency keep pulling you along. And it can feel clumsy, or even unfair, to ask others to adjust their pace in order to accommodate your rhythm. Ironically, there’s often not enough time to share the full context for a slower approach, leading to requests appearing demanding, difficult or strange. It’s a sad thing, really, to feel good people miss each other’s rhythms - deepening the isolation I already fear, shaped by the muscle memory of being excluded, simply because I can’t (or won’t) keep up.

There was a time when I’d try to justify my pace - offering reasons, labels, diagnoses - sometimes clinical, sometimes personal. I would provide a list of explanations for why I move more slowly. But I’ve learned that these explanations rarely shift the bigger picture. At best, they grant temporary exceptions for individuals. At worst, they make me feel like a problem to be solved, rather than a person to be met.

Because what’s truly at stake is not just pace - it’s belonging.

In a world that runs on speed, slowness becomes a kind of misunderstood language. You find yourself constantly translating, constantly catching up, constantly choosing between honouring your own rhythm or neglecting it in the race for relevance. And that translation is costly. It takes energy. It takes self-trust. It takes a toll.

For those of us who experience Rejection Sensitivity Dysphoria, the toll is amplified. It’s not just the fear of letting others down - it’s the emotional aftershock when that fear becomes reality. It’s the slow accumulation of feeling left out, misread, or deemed too much - or not enough - again and again. Each small rupture lands with force, and over time, the body adapts, finding ways to protect you from further social risk. Often in ways that lead to a quiet return to isolation - letting fear cloud what you know to be possible, true, or worth holding onto. Leaning into fear can feel like relief when it’s so familiar.

And it’s complicated - because I know it’s possible. I’ve tasted the power of a slower pace. But my relationship to that shift in living is tangled. Moving through the world in this way is possible but often only seasonally, unless I forgo many of the communities that are dear to me. So for now, I move slowly, but only until the backlog catches up. Then April disappears, I haven’t prepared for what’s next, and I’m forced into a counterintuitive sprint. I ride a wave of adrenaline I know I’ll pay for later - physically, emotionally, and probably relationally.

I’m trying to honour the idea that everything should take the time it takes. Truly, I am. But even in spaces where values are shared - when I sit in meetings with like-minded people, people who get it - I still feel the squeeze. Perhaps I’ll name the limited hours we’ve agreed on, which will be received with nods and care. But then comes the task. The deadline. The unspoken urgency. And I feel the familiar pressure to fit the pace of the work. Just this once, because once we push through this, then... 

(We all know then never comes.)

I look back at earlier versions of myself - before I understood how pace can be so violent. And before that before, the shaping of a young mind to relentlessly chase. I see how I too upheld a system that lost out on the perspectives of those more generative than conventionally productive. I see how I was praised for my productivity, and how I came to equate this with my worth. In some ways I grieve that naivety; it was far less exposing to just keep going. I feel guilt, sometimes, for not understanding it all sooner. For participating in a culture that so clearly celebrated function over humanity.

Now, I’m trying to unbuild what I once upheld. I long for balance. I believe it’s possible. But I also know that choosing slowness often comes at the cost of inclusion. And I wrestle with that. How do I stay true hold onto slowness without losing the connections that give life its depth?

There is space, too, to be a villager - not a status or role. To be mycelial, not individual. To weave relationships across time. In the slow, change doesn’t demand crisis, but shift emerges through connection, care, and the long work of being with.