pace-of-life
Sat, 08 Nov 2025
| last modified Sun, 08 Mar 2026
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I often think about my pace of life.
By that I mean a few things: how many things am I trying to do? how often do I get to be bored and just think? how pressured do I feel to go fast?
Clearly the pace should not always be the same. My access to people, places and ephemeral whims vary drastically, so surely my pace would change with my capacity and access to cool stuff. Sometimes you’re sprinting and sometimes you’re doing cross country - you’ve got to work with the track.
My contention is this: our modern culture is pushing us (or more modestly: people like me) into faster paced lives. Unsustainable sprints. Dehumanising rushes.
Since coming to Oxford, there has been an electric kind of buzz - a collective impatience and nervous excitement. Our enemy is the clock; we march to spurn the time. Sports, music, academics, friendships. It’s always yes and never no. In some ways it’s the most fun thing ever. Yet in the quiet moments that escape your net of scheduling and cramming, you feel a twinge in your back. You pause and stare blankly for a second too long. You come down… hard.
Perhaps this is just my experience, and - for sure - many just have more capacity than me. But it makes me skeptical of the whole rushing around business.
I feel such a rightness when I live at a slower pace. There are few things quite like walking slowly and taking in the buildings, people, and sounds. The silence comes a friend, and it’s like my mind is free to breath.
What is the value of such a thing? Is it worth doing less in order to obtain it? Maybe you’ll come to a different conclusion, but I think its a really important question to ask.
It relates nicely to the Christian idea of our creatureliness or the goodness in being aware of our nature as created beings. This framing of man in the face of God draws us to reflect on our limits. It also calls us into trust: trust that God has good works for us to do; trust that he sets our limits with wisdom; trust that we’ll find satisfaction in Him instead of our own strivings for significance.
Hopefully a future Caleb will read this and remember to slow down. One can hope.
last 5 blogs
- in-honour (14 Nov)
- pace-of-life (8 Nov)
- poeming is here (1 Nov)
- open spaces (25 Oct)
- reading more (16 Oct)