Encounter No 2 from A Motivator Writer

 

🌘 Encounter #2

The Traveler Who Refused to Walk Faster

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That day, I was walking with intent.

Not urgency exactly, but something close enough to borrow its shoes.
My steps were longer. My breath impatient.
I had decided the road should cooperate.

That was when he appeared again.

This time, he was already ahead of me.

Not by much. Just enough to be irritating.

I sped up.
So did he.
But only to maintain the same small distance, as if the space between us had been negotiated in advance.

“Do you mind?” I called out. “I’m in a bit of a hurry.”

He didn’t turn around.

“You’re walking like someone being chased,” he said, calmly, almost kindly.

I laughed, sharp and humorless.
“No one’s chasing me.”

“That’s what makes it exhausting.”

I fell into step beside him.
Immediately, my pace felt loud.

He walked slowly, not lazily.
Each step deliberate, placed as if the ground deserved acknowledgment.

“You always move like this?” I asked. “As if time owes you nothing?”

He stopped.

Not abruptly.
Just enough that the world had to rearrange itself around the pause.

“Faster,” he said, “is not a direction.”

I exhaled hard.
“I don’t have the luxury of slowness.”

He finally looked at me then.
His eyes were alert, unhurried, unafraid of the moment passing.

“Everyone thinks that,” he said.
“Until they realize speed is the most expensive habit they own.”

We resumed walking.

My legs resisted the new rhythm.
My thoughts raced ahead, impatient, rehearsing future conversations that might never happen.

He noticed.

“You’ve already arrived somewhere you’re not,” he said.

“That’s how planning works.”

“No,” he replied.
“That’s how absence works.”

The road narrowed.
Grass brushed against our ankles.
Somewhere behind us, a sound like something being dropped and not retrieved.

“I can’t slow down,” I said quietly, the confession surprising me.

“You can,” he replied.
“You’re just afraid of what will catch up.”

We walked in silence then.

I became aware of things I had been outrunning:
the ache in my calves,
the shallow rhythm of my breath,
the question I hadn’t asked myself in a long time.

He stopped again.

This time, I didn’t mind.

“You don’t need to walk faster,” he said, “to arrive sooner at what’s waiting.”

I looked ahead.

The road had not changed.
But I had.

When I turned back to thank him, he was already slowing the air somewhere else.

I continued at the same measured pace.

Nothing chased me.

Everything followed.

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🌑
Urgency is convincing.
Stillness is honest.