The Time of a Walk
As I sit in a café, my neighbor — apparently a foreign businessman — receives a phone call. I’m so close I can’t help but overhear the conversation. He says, "St. Tropez is a village. In five minutes you’ve seen everything, so I went back to Nice."
If you’ve never been to St. Tropez, I’ll admit it’s not a big city. Compared to a megapolis, yes, it can look like a village.
But the last time I was there, I regretted only having one day to visit.
So what made the difference?
The pace.
If you move fast, you miss everything. You only see the big things: big buildings, big events, loud people, flashy cars…
But a place like St. Tropez (or any place really) only reveals itself if you slow down and let yourself settle into its rhythm. The south of France, especially, is about relaxing, about enjoying the moment. Taking it slow.
We’re all moving so fast — and as a whole, humanity has massively sped up. It started with transportation: we shrank distances by moving from horses to bikes, then to cars, trains, planes, and boats with motors. What used to be a four-day trip by sea from England to New York became a seven-hour flight.
Then came the Internet, and distance itself disappeared.
I’m no physicist, but I can explain this simply: time and distance are related.
Before the internet, if you wanted to find a new place to live, you had to physically go to a real estate agency — maybe call, make an appointment, browse a catalog, and visit each apartment in person. Every step required movement, and movement took time.
Now? You sit on your sofa and scroll through dozens of filtered listings in minutes.
The same goes for learning: want to study geology, carpentry, economics, or just read the latest news? You don’t need a library, a class, or a newspaper stand. It’s all in your phone.
So yes, we’ve saved time. But what do we do with it?
Mostly, we try to do more. We stay busy. We overload. We start running.
There’s a French author I love, Jean Giono, who wrote about le temps de la marche — the time of the walk. When you walk from your home to the village, you become a witness to the miracle of life:
A drop of dew catching the sunlight like gold.
A butterfly emerging from its cocoon, wings still drying.
A mother cat carrying her kitten to safety.
A deer startled into flight...
All of that happens in nature, of course. But magic happens in the city too — if you walk slowly enough to notice it:
An elderly couple holding hands.
A rough-looking man smiling at a baby.
Someone in the subway, reading a book instead of staring at their phone.
The shapes of buildings, the shifting colors, the echo of a violin in the street.
Life is always happening.
Beauty is always there.
If — and only if — we take the time to look.
Here’s my two cents for today:
Stop chasing. Slow down. Let it come to you.
