It was a public holiday, and I didn’t have any plans. I knew places would be flooded with people, so it was better for me to walk instead of getting stuck in the rush. I just needed to move, to walk.

That morning was quiet and cloudy. Perfect for a walk. Somehow the air felt a little different, heavier, as if life was nudging me to notice more: no special reason, no urgent task. I got myself ready with my favourite shoes; my feet felt breathable, and I liked the thickness of the base that provided a cushioning effect. My boring weekend began as a gentle urge that turned into a daily ritual. I wasted no more time thinking about what to do for the day. I started walking.

As I was walking, I reflected on the book I had read a few days ago that gave me another perspective on time and belief systems. After a while, I just wanted to clear my head and continue walking. The more I walked, the more I noticed. 

Walking Slows Us Down To Catch Up

We always think of the future as something rushing towards us. Something we often worry about and keep chasing. But walking taught me a different idea/ turned this idea on its head. It tells you to slow down. Even when you slow down, you are still in motion. The path will unfold with each step you take.

I remember I faced a lot of difficulties doing something I was not familiar with. Back then, I wished time could pass faster so I could get the results I wanted. I had been doing sales for more than 5 years when I wanted to try something new but I was too afraid to try. A few years ago, I wished to learn more about digital marketing, website building and video editing. It was difficult and frustrating at times. I was overloaded with information. I didn’t know where to start and wanted to know everything at once. I didn’t know whether I could make it or not. Would I ever give up? Would anyone like what I did? But it didn’t happen this way. The future doesn’t arrive all at once. It reveals itself in fragments. Just like the next stretch of road, you see when you round a corner. Walking regularly taught me patience the kind of patience our society often devalues. We are always eager for instant results, two-year plans, and quarterly goals. But while walking, every step counts; there’s no fast-forward button, so you keep going.

Moving Forward Doesn’t Mean Rushing

I tried walking different paths: roads, nearby neighbourhoods, parks, lakes and open-air malls. No matter where I walked, I always walked with intention but not towards specific milestones. I wasn’t in a rush, I wasn’t chasing time, not calculating my steps over some time, not needing to get somewhere, just being present. There was no prize at the end, no finish line. There was so much freedom where there was no pressure because walking itself was meaningful on its own. I remember stopping mid-step, feeling a deep and unexpected calm. Walking reminded me that momentum doesn’t have to look dramatic. You don’t need to sprint to make progress. What I discovered was that the most important shifts happen when your pace slows to match what you value most, not neglecting other aspects of your life for something else. I always remind myself and my friends to take interval rests whether we need them or not, because sometimes we may not realise we need the rest, especially when we are so focused on rushing and chasing timelines. In that dance between motion and rest, the future becomes less about control and more about alignment.

Trust the Pace: Walking Teaches Us That Direction Matters More Than Speed

We are often taught to prioritise speed so that we don’t feel we are left behind. It’s like constantly chasing the next thing, how fast can we reach the next milestone, how quickly we can achieve something. There will always be someone who works faster or slower than us. I was wrong about working faster, thinking that I was heading in the right direction. Walking taught me to value direction instead. 

Walking is one of the last few unhurried things in a world addicted to urgency. It doesn’t demand productivity. It doesn’t require perfection. All it asks is that you show up. Feet on the ground.

There were days when I didn’t know where I was heading. I went on the normal route I used to walk but then took a new turn. I just followed curiosity- a street I hadn’t explored, a new neighbourhood, and a new version of me that I hadn’t met. And more often than not, those detours led to something worthwhile: a quiet moment. An unexpected conversation, a shift in perspective, and the kind of silence that speaks volumes. In life, we often obsess about milestones, promotions, and the next big thing, marriage. But here’s the deeper question. Are we heading somewhere that feels right? Or just merely following so we are not left behind? Or are we speeding toward a future we never actually chose?

When you walk regularly and long enough, especially alone, something interesting happens. You begin to trust yourself, your body and your legs that carry you further than you expected. When you have fewer distractions, your senses sharpen. This trust starts to extend into other parts of your life. Because you learn to listen to your pace, your instincts, and your questions, you gain another perspective that helps you make better decisions. The future which feels mysterious, feels less like a question and more like a possibility, revealed through moving slowly and honestly, step by step, not controlled by logic or planning alone.

The Path Isn’t Always Linear. What ifs

There were days I walked in circles and doubted everything. Days when hard work didn’t feel like progress. Progress that didn’t seem significant. But here’s what I learned. We only see some clarity when we take the path and become comfortable with uncertainty. If you have never experienced being lost or doubted yourself, how would you know the beauty of finding your way? How would you know which beliefs are truly yours? We are not born to know everything all at once. When you are on foot, you adjust, you move, and you trust more day by day. You can’t make the right decision until you have made the wrong one. If you have never made the wrong ones, how would recognise the right ones when they came? If you don’t know how to recognise the right ones when they come, it’s because you never learned how to listen. If you never learned how to listen, you will mistake noise for your friend and silence for something to avoid. If noise feels like company, and silence feels like an enemy, you will miss the voice that truly knows your way, where peace lives within. If you miss the voice that you have been neglecting, you will keep chasing the echoes that were never meant for you. If you chase the echoes that were never meant for you, you will find yourself answers that never belonged to you. If you never find the answers that belong to you, you’ll end up living by answers that never belonged to you and wonder why they never fit. If they never belonged and never fit, maybe the questions weren’t yours to begin with. Maybe you wore the stitches from someone else fear, someone else dreams, someone else insecurities. It was familiar and then became protection, and safety that turned prison when it’s built from silence and generation beliefs that are felt but unspoken. These are truths that were patched but not addressed, confronted, but avoided, heard and acknowledged but never fixed. With these deep-rooted thoughts, the patches became layers that never healed; fear swept in, and it became a quiet burden you carried in silence. You may notice some people think and feel the same so you might think it’s okay since many are the same. You start to believe it’s normal. But if you listen closely, you will hear it because what’s common isn’t always true especially if you doubt or disagree with an outcome that could be different or more aligned with yourself. What’s familiar isn’t always right. There could be no answer, just questions. A question that doesn’t demand an immediate answer but invites an honest pause, the belief you carried for years, wasn’t yours to continue, fear was contagious or inherited; the version of success was someone else dream disguised in your name. Maybe this wasn’t who you were before all the noises came. Maybe, just take the courage to ask: “Is this really me?” You just hadn’t met yourself yet. Not this version.

The Road Ahead

What I shared above were the questions and thoughts that came to me. Even now, I don’t pretend to have everything figured out  But maybe that’s the point. If you have been following my blog for a while and are looking for another perspective, perhaps you can listen to your inner rhythms by starting to walk. Sometimes the most radical thing you can do is go for a walk with no destination, trusting that where you end up will make sense later, if not now, then someday it will, forming underfoot with every step you take, helping you to come back to yourself.