The Monk Who Forgot to Hurry

A young monk, newly arrived at a forest monastery, was asked by his teacher to deliver a message to another temple, two villages away. "Walk carefully," said the teacher. "There is rain on the path."

The young monk left at once. He hurried, because he wanted to do well. He skipped the long bend and cut through the field. He nearly slipped at the river crossing. He did not stop for tea at the village inn, where an old man tried to wave him in.

He arrived at the second temple by mid-afternoon, breathless and pleased.

The abbot of the second temple read the message and said, "Thank you. Now, please return to your teacher. He is waiting for the answer."

The young monk turned to leave. Outside, an old monk was sitting on the steps, watching the rain ease.

"Are you the one who came from the forest monastery?" the old monk asked.

"Yes."

"And how was the path?"

The young monk thought for a moment. "I — I don't quite remember," he said. "I walked it quickly."

The old monk smiled. "Walk back slowly, then. Your teacher already knows what you do not. He sent you to walk the path. The message was an excuse."

What the story is for

We confuse purpose with hurry. We treat the destination as the point, and the time between as something to be minimized.

But the time between is most of life.

The walk to the bus, the cooking of dinner, the wait at the doctor's, the bath of a small child, the slow meeting that did not need to be a meeting — these are not the gaps in your life. These are your life. The "important" moments — the wedding, the launch, the move — make up perhaps 0.1% of the days you will live. The other 99.9% is the path between.

If you walk the path quickly, you arrive at the end of your life with a great many destinations and very little walked.

A small practice

Pick one walk you do almost every day — to the train, to the kitchen, to your child's school. Do it once this week without hurrying. Without a podcast. Without thinking ahead to what is at the end.

Notice the path itself. The light, the air, the small wear on the shoe. Notice that you arrive at the end at almost exactly the same time as you would have if you had hurried — perhaps thirty seconds later. Notice that you arrive different.

The young monk, the story tells us, walked back slowly. The path was longer that way. He remembered all of it.

That was the message his teacher had been waiting for.