I met Darwin Fogt at our community pool because I noticed he was reading one of my favorite authors, Haruki Murakami. It was in one a moment that could’ve easily disappeared into the waves of my calesthenics but instead of keeping to myself, I asked him which Murakami book he was reading, and we began talking.
That conversation eventually led somewhere neither of us could have predicted, into a much larger question about what happens to human beings when we rarely have enough quiet to hear ourselves think. That question feels particularly relevant now. We live inside an economy built on speed, interruption and perpetual stimulation. The phone vibrates, the inbox fills, the news never stops, and even leisure has become something we track, optimize and document. Children are growing up with an unprecedented amount of stimulation, young adults are navigating work and social lives through screens, executives and entrepreneurs are expected to remain perpetually available, and older adults are often encouraged to stay busy rather than simply be. The pressure may look different at different ages, but the underlying condition is remarkably similar. We have become uncomfortable with unoccupied time. Silence is a killer for many, especially those weaned on the internet and social media.
I first encountered the idea of slowing down in Italy in the early 2002, when the slow food movement was already offering a quiet rebellion against the acceleration of modern life. The philosophy was deceptively simple. Food was not merely fuel to be consumed as quickly as possible. It had origins, texture, tradition, place and people attached to it. Eating could be an experience rather than an interruption between more important activities. What struck me then, and strikes me even more now, is how easily the same principle can be applied beyond the dinner table. Perhaps we need a slow movement for attention itself.
The appeal of slowness is not simply that it allows us to relax. Rest is important, but I think something more profound happens when the external noise diminishes. We begin to encounter parts of ourselves that have been crowded out by obligation and stimulation. Curiosity has room to return. Imagination begins to wander. An idea that has been buried beneath a thousand interruptions may finally have enough space to develop. What we sometimes call the inner child may actually be the part of us that still knows how to play, wonder and become absorbed in something without immediately asking what it will produce.
There is another dimension to this that matters just as much. Our bodies are not designed for perpetual alertness. When the demands of modern life keep us in a state of continual stimulation and stress, the consequences can extend well beyond feeling tired or distracted. Sleep, concentration, mood, relationships and our ability to make thoughtful decisions can all be affected. The question, then, is not whether we can survive another notification, another deadline or another hour of scrolling. Most of us can. The more interesting question is what kind of human beings we become when this becomes the normal rhythm of life.
That is why I think the conversation around slowness needs to move beyond the familiar language of wellness. This is not simply about taking a spa day, practicing mindfulness for ten minutes or learning to breathe more deeply. Those things can be useful, but the larger issue is cultural. We have created a world in which speed is routinely confused with importance and busyness with value. Someone who is constantly occupied is often assumed to be productive, while someone sitting quietly appears to be doing nothing. Yet some of the most consequential forms of human thought have always required periods in which nothing obvious appears to be happening.
For entrepreneurs and leaders, this may be particularly difficult to accept. Their identities are often built around action, decisions and momentum. They are rewarded for seeing what needs to happen next and making it happen. The ability to stop can therefore feel less like freedom than negligence. Yet there is a difference between stepping away from responsibility and stepping away from noise. The latter may be precisely what allows a leader to return with better judgment, greater perspective and a clearer understanding of what actually matters.
The same principle applies to children, perhaps even more urgently. A child who has nothing scheduled is not necessarily wasting time. Boredom can become the beginning of invention. A stick becomes a sword, a cardboard box becomes a spaceship, an afternoon becomes an adventure. Somewhere along the way, many of us learned to replace that capacity for spontaneous engagement with organized activity and digital stimulation. We became very good at consuming experiences and less practiced at creating them.
The older we become, the stakes change, but the need for that spaciousness does not disappear. If anything, it can become more important. There is a particular kind of wisdom that emerges when a person has enough distance from the frantic demands of achievement to ask what they actually think. The accumulated experience of a lifetime can either become a source of insight or simply another archive of things that happened. Quiet gives us an opportunity to make meaning from what we have lived.
Perhaps this is what attracted me to that conversation with Darwin in the first place. It began with a book. Two strangers at a community pool recognized something they shared, and curiosity did the rest. There was no algorithm suggesting that we should meet, no networking objective, no productivity metric attached to the exchange. I noticed a book I loved, asked a question and discovered another mind.
That seems increasingly precious.
The world is not going to become quieter on its own. There will always be another notification, another demand, another headline and another reason to hurry. Slowness therefore may not be something we find. It may be something we deliberately create.
That could mean sitting beside a pool with a book and allowing a stranger to interrupt your solitude. It could mean walking without measuring the distance, having dinner without photographing it, allowing a child to become bored, or giving yourself an afternoon in which nothing has to become anything.
Perhaps the point is not to escape modern life but to reclaim enough space within it to remember who we are when nobody is asking anything of us.
That is where the inner child may still be waiting. It may also be where the inner genius lives, underneath the noise, the deadlines, the expectations and the endless demand to produce.
And perhaps that is the real promise of slow.
Not simply that we unwind.
That we return to ourselves.
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