Speaker 1: Us studious. Welcome to the Stillness Journal. I'm Maya, and
Speaker 1: today I want to talk about something. We are rarely
Speaker 1: given permission to honor your own rhythm. There is a
Speaker 1: pace that belongs to you. Not the one your family
Speaker 1: taught you, not the one your work demands, not the
Speaker 1: one the world insists you should keep, but the one
Speaker 1: that lives in your bones, the one that moves in
Speaker 1: your chest when no one is watching. And this pace
Speaker 1: has been trying to reach you for a long time.
Speaker 1: It has been knocking quietly, waiting for you to listen.
Speaker 1: We live in a time that worships speed. The faster
Speaker 1: you answer an email, the more reliable you seem, The
Speaker 1: faster you finish a task, the more productive you are,
Speaker 1: the faster you move through your day, the more you
Speaker 1: have accomplished. And somewhere along the way, we began to
Speaker 1: believe that faster was better, that to keep up was
Speaker 1: to belong, that to slow down was to fall behind.
Speaker 1: But there is a kind of exhaustion that comes from
Speaker 1: living at a pace that is not yours. It shows
Speaker 1: up as a heaviness in the morning that has no
Speaker 1: clear source. It shows up as a restlessness in the
Speaker 1: evening that nothing seems to soothe. It shows up as
Speaker 1: a quiet kind of grief that you cannot quite name,
Speaker 1: And it is the grief of a life lived in
Speaker 1: someone else's tempo. Settling, Let your body find the surface
Speaker 1: beneath you, Let it soften into wherever you are. Let
Speaker 1: your shoulders drop, even just a little. Let your jaw unclench,
Speaker 1: even just slightly. Let your hands open, even if just
Speaker 1: a fraction. There is nothing to figure out here, nothing
Speaker 1: to solve, nothing to understand. Just this breath and the
Speaker 1: next one, and the one after that. The rhythm that
Speaker 1: is yours may not be the rhythm of the people
Speaker 1: around you. And that is not a flaw. It is
Speaker 1: not a failure of discipline. It is not a sign
Speaker 1: that something is wrong with you. It is a sign
Speaker 1: that you are tuned to a different drum. And the
Speaker 1: work of a life sometimes is learning to hear that
Speaker 1: drum clearly enough that you can move to it, even
Speaker 1: when others do not. There is a kind of courage
Speaker 1: required to live at your own pace, because the world
Speaker 1: will ask you to explain it, the world will ask
Speaker 1: you to justify it. The world will suggest that you
Speaker 1: are being difficult or unrealistic, or selfish when all you
Speaker 1: are doing is trying to honor the way you are made.
Speaker 1: And the world will not always understand. But the world
Speaker 1: does not have to understand for you to be allowed
Speaker 1: to live this way. Your rhythm might be slow, It
Speaker 1: might be quieter than the rhythms of the people you love.
Speaker 1: It might involve more pauses than you have been taught
Speaker 1: to take. It might mean saying no to things that
Speaker 1: look like opportunities but feel like obligations. It might mean
Speaker 1: saying yes to things that the world would not necessarily celebrate,
Speaker 1: and that is all right. That is your right, that
Speaker 1: is your work to honor. When you live out over them,
Speaker 1: the body begins to send signals. It tightens, it tires,
Speaker 1: It rebels in small ways that are easy to overlook.
Speaker 1: A headache that arrives without explanation, a sleep that does
Speaker 1: not restore attension in the chest, that has nothing to
Speaker 1: do with anything you can name. The body is not
Speaker 1: punishing you, It is not betraying you. It is asking you,
Speaker 1: in its quiet way, to come home, to come back
Speaker 1: to the pace that is yours. And coming home does
Speaker 1: not have to be a dramatic gesture. It does not
Speaker 1: have to mean quitting your job, or leaving your relationship,
Speaker 1: or moving to a new city. Sometimes coming home is
Speaker 1: just a small choice. A choice to pause before you answer,
Speaker 1: a choice to take a slow breath before you begin
Speaker 1: your day, a choice to let the dishes wait while
Speaker 1: you sit for five minutes with your tea, a choice
Speaker 1: to walk instead of rush, A choice to listen to
Speaker 1: the body before you listen to the calendar. The smallest choices,
Speaker 1: repeated with care, begin to reshape the way a life feels.
Speaker 1: They do not change the outer circumstances very much, but
Speaker 1: they change the inner weather. They change the way you
Speaker 1: meet your days. They change the way your nervous system
Speaker 1: holds the world, and over time they change the rhythm itself.
Speaker 1: They bring it back towards something that feels more like you.
Speaker 1: I think sometimes we confuse the rhythm that is ours
Speaker 1: with the rhythm we wish was ours. The wish is real,
Speaker 1: the longing is real. But underneath it there is another rhythm,
Speaker 1: a quieter one, an older one one that has been
Speaker 1: there since you were small, the rhythm of the child
Speaker 1: who liked to take their time, the rhythm of the
Speaker 1: young person who needed longer to process before they answered
Speaker 1: the rhythm of the person who always felt a little
Speaker 1: out of step with the people around them. That rhythm
Speaker 1: is not a problem to be solved. It is a
Speaker 1: gift to be tended. It is the way the world
Speaker 1: comes into you. It is the way you metabolize experience.
Speaker 1: It is the way your nervous system knows how to
Speaker 1: land safely in a body. And if you can learn
Speaker 1: to honor it, not fight it, not fix it, not
Speaker 1: pretend it is something else, you will find a steadiness
Speaker 1: that no amount of speeding up could ever give you.
Speaker 1: There is a kind of wisdom, and that the fast
Speaker 1: world does not have access to. The fast world sees
Speaker 1: what is on the surface. It sees the immediate, it
Speaker 1: sees the urgent. But the slow world sees what is underneath.
Speaker 1: The slow world sees the seeds before they sprout. The
Speaker 1: slow world sees the roots before the flowers. The slow
Speaker 1: world knows that some things take the time they take,
Speaker 1: and that pushing them rarely helps. You may have a
Speaker 1: project that is moving slowly. You may have a relationship
Speaker 1: that is unfolding slowly. You may have a healing that
Speaker 1: is happening slowly, and the world may be telling you
Speaker 1: to speed it up to push harder, to do more,
Speaker 1: to be more efficient. But the slow world is asking
Speaker 1: you to trust, to let the thing take its time,
Speaker 1: to let the seasons do their work, to let the
Speaker 1: soil do what soil does. Trusting your rhythm means trusting
Speaker 1: that you are not behind, you are not late, you
Speaker 1: are not missing anything. You are exactly where your rhythm
Speaker 1: has brought you. And that place is not a mistake,
Speaker 1: it is not a failure. It is the place from
Speaker 1: which you're next step will be the right step, not
Speaker 1: the fastest step, the right step, and there is a
Speaker 1: world of difference between those two things. I want to
Speaker 1: invite you, just for a moment, to listen for your
Speaker 1: own drum, Not the drum of the calendar, not the
Speaker 1: drum of the inbox, not the drum of the expectations
Speaker 1: that have settled on your shoulders, but the drum underneath,
Speaker 1: the one that beats in the chest when everything is quiet,
Speaker 1: the one that has been there since before you learned
Speaker 1: to hurry, the one that knows your name in a
Speaker 1: voice no one else has ever used. Living at your
Speaker 1: own rhythm will sometimes mean disappointing other people. It will
Speaker 1: sometimes mean being misunderstood. It will sometimes mean saying no
Speaker 1: when everyone else is saying yes. It will sometimes mean
Speaker 1: taking longer than the world thinks you should. And these
Speaker 1: are not failures of character. These are the cost of
Speaker 1: loyalty to yourself. And that cost is worth paying again
Speaker 1: and again, because the alternative is a slow erosion of
Speaker 1: the person you are. There is a tenderness required for this,
Speaker 1: because you will not always get it right. You will
Speaker 1: sometimes push too fast, you will sometimes accommodate too much.
Speaker 1: You will sometimes lose the threat of your own rhythm
Speaker 1: for weeks or months at a time, and when you notice,
Speaker 1: when you come back to yourself, the work is not
Speaker 1: to shame yourself for the lapse. The work is simply
Speaker 1: to begin again, to breathe again, to listen again, to
Speaker 1: come home again. Coming home to your own rhythm is
Speaker 1: not a destination you arrive at once. It is a practice,
Speaker 1: a daily, hourly practice of returning, of pausing long enough
Speaker 1: to ask the body what do you need, of listening
Speaker 1: long enough to hear the answer, of trusting the answer
Speaker 1: enough to act on it, even in small ways, even
Speaker 1: when no one is watching, even when it feels inconvenient.
Speaker 1: The world will keep spinning at its own speed. It
Speaker 1: will keep producing its own demands, it will keep offering
Speaker 1: its own rhythms for you to fall into, and you
Speaker 1: will not be able to stop the world. But you
Speaker 1: can choose again and again to step back into your
Speaker 1: own pace, to remember that the world does not get
Speaker 1: to set your tempo. That tempo is yours, it has
Speaker 1: always been yours, and no amount of noise from the
Speaker 1: outside can take that away unless you let it. I
Speaker 1: want to leave you with a small practice for the
Speaker 1: days ahead. Once or twice a day, when you remember pause,
Speaker 1: put a hand on your chest and ask, what is
Speaker 1: my rhythm right now? Not what should it be, not
Speaker 1: what would be more efficient, What is it right now
Speaker 1: in this body? And then wait, listen, notice what comes.
Speaker 1: Maybe the answer is fast, maybe the answer is slow.
Speaker 1: Maybe the answer is somewhere in between. Whatever it is
Speaker 1: that is your tempo for this moment, and you are
Speaker 1: allowed to honor it. And as you go through the
Speaker 1: rest of your day, I want you to remember this.
Speaker 1: You are not a machine to be optimized. You are
Speaker 1: not a project to be completed. You are a living
Speaker 1: creature with a tempo that belongs to you alone. And
Speaker 1: the most radical thing you can do in a world
Speaker 1: that wants you to hurry, is to move at the
Speaker 1: pace that lets you feel your life, not skim it,
Speaker 1: not race through it, feel it from the inside, at
Speaker 1: the speed of breath. That is enough. You are enough
Speaker 1: at whatever pace you are able to move today, you
Speaker 1: are enough. The world has tried to convince you otherwise.
Speaker 1: But the world is wrong about that. The world has
Speaker 1: always been wrong about that. And your own rhythm, the
Speaker 1: one that has been quietly waiting for you, knows the truth.
Speaker 1: It has always known the truth, and it will keep
Speaker 1: waiting kindly until you are ready to come back to it.
Speaker 1: So come back when you can, come back in the
Speaker 1: small ways, come back again and again. There is no
Speaker 1: failing at this. There is only returning, returning to the
Speaker 1: pace that is yours, Returning to the breath that is yours,
Speaker 1: Returning to the body that has been carrying you home
Speaker 1: all along, at exactly the speed you needed to arrive