Pause. Take a breath. Feel the ground beneath your feet. For just 10 seconds, maybe a minute, let everything come to a stop. All the momentum from your day, your week. Let it go.
How often do you intentionally slow down? How much do you prioritize the rhythm of your life? How do you break out of the societal flow and live at a more sustainable pace? How do you, as Dallas Willard so aptly put it, ruthlessly eliminate hurry?
I do not know all the answers to these questions, but on a journey across the Dolomites, hiking between mountain huts through some of the most staggeringly beautiful terrain on earth, I certainly found some clues.
Pacing
Our tendency is to move quickly. Efficiently, systematically, effectively. But it doesn't take a long time in a wild place to discover that efficiency is simply not enough. Sometimes it is required, but to focus solely on moving from Point A to Point B as quickly as possible will cause us to miss where we are. The intricacy of patterns in the rocks, trees, and sky, the sheer grandeur of the landscape, the feel of the chill wind whipping at your face. None of it can be fully experienced if your eyes remain on the trail ahead of you. We must pause often and walk only as quickly as the moment demands.
Wonder
In our day to day lives, it's not often that we actively experience wonder, the feeling of having our attention captured by something profound. Sometimes it takes a wild places to reignite the childlike sense of being enraptured by something completely new and entirely beautiful. In a place such as this, there is no shortage of wonder, it sits around nearly every turn, and if the pace of your walk is as it should be, it is impossible to miss. It may be full of awe and glory, or it may be soft, something that is often missed. Either way, wonder serves as the basis for hope, for presence, and for love. It would do us well to seek it as often as we can.
Rhythm
Moving either too slowly, or too quickly can ultimately make it difficult for us to arrive where we are meant to. A storm may dictate that we prioritize moving as quickly as possible and forgoing wonder in order to, well, not die. But we must be careful to slow down again once the storm has passed. Knowing when to push hard, when to slow down, and when to stop entirely is what gives us capacity to go further than we can imagine.
As I have returned home, and as you conclude reading, it would do both of us well to consider how we can live with these in mind even when we are not granted the luxury of being in a place such as this. Slowing down, seeking wonder, and cultivating awareness of rhythm is not limited to the Dolomites. It is something that we can all choose to practice, little by little, one step at a time, learning to live as more of who we are meant to be.
Thank you for reading!
Zach
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