13th Street

When pace replaces presence

I spent part of my early professional career working for Cargill in Wichita, Kansas. A couple of years in, I bought my first house about ten minutes from the office. I drove a black two-door Ford Probe with dark-tinted windows. Most mornings, I’d hop in, crank up some rap music, sip an energy drink, and take a right out of my neighborhood onto North Oliver — heading toward the freeway for the short drive in.

On the way, I often passed my co-worker, Sandy, driving her grey Chevy Lumina in the opposite direction, down North Oliver to 13th Street. After seeing her do this enough times, I walked to her office one morning to ask, “Why do you take the long way to work?”

She looked at me like the answer was obvious. “Because I love my slow drive in. Going thirty miles an hour, drinking my coffee, listening to country music. I show up relaxed and ready for the day.”

Her response has stayed with me for twenty-five years. But at the time, I wasn’t able to truly understand what she meant. I was young, ambitious, and charging full speed into my career.

It’s rare for any of us to stop and examine the micro-choices we make throughout a day that quietly ramp up our pace. The alarm goes off, and we grab our phones to see what the world wants from us. Coffee to wake and stimulate us. The news blares in the background as we scan social media. Maybe a quick kiss for our loved ones. Then we’re out the door, already speeding into the day. And it only amplifies from there — a workday packed with competing priorities, meetings to get through, and emails and internal messages rolling in long past the time when the workday should end. Add a family and kids’ schedules to the mix, and we’re moving from sunup to sundown.

A fast life rarely arrives all at once. It builds through small pushes — rushed mornings, extra commitments, the phone pinging all day — until the pace takes on a life of its own. It’s a flywheel we don’t even realize we’re spinning. At first, we’re the ones pushing it. Eventually, the pace is pushing us. We tell ourselves this is just how life works. After all, everyone around us is doing the same.

I’m four months removed from a 30-year career built on full days and constant demands. And even though that life stopped, my Oura ring still shows my body running at high stress levels, even on days when I feel completely relaxed.

This raised a simple question for me: why was my body still running at this level? Deb Dana’s work on how the nervous system interprets safety and threat helped explain what was happening. Our nervous system is constantly scanning our environment. When it senses a threat, we shift into a sympathetic state built for action — focused, efficient, fast — but pulled away from presence and calm. When it senses safety, we settle into a parasympathetic state where we can slow down, connect, and feel. After years of living in that action-oriented mode, the body makes it the new normal. So even when life finally slows, the nervous system may not, which is exactly what my Oura ring was showing me. My body had learned to stay ready for the next punch, even after the fight was long over.

The difference is stark when the body shifts into that parasympathetic state. For me, I get glimpses of it in a warm shower, in a hot sauna, or while walking in nature. Solutions appear. I’m present enough to process my thoughts with clarity and reach conclusions in places where I’d previously been stuck. But these moments are often brief, because life pulls us back into motion before we realize it.

A good friend and former colleague of mine manages a high-revenue portfolio of service businesses across North America. He keeps an incredible pace, carrying the weight of decisions, people, and the constant pressure to grow. At a seminar, the presenter invited anyone to come forward and be coached in front of the room. My friend stood up, and when he spoke, the room went silent: “Teach me how to be present with my young family at dinner.”

The uncomfortable truth is that we can’t go from a hectic workday to genuine presence on command. Even if we can momentarily calm our nervous system, actual presence requires more space than a brief pause can provide. Played out over many years, this has profound consequences.

Several years ago, in an effort to better understand myself and what I wanted out of life, I participated in a multi-week workshop on meaning and fulfillment. During one session, as we sat knee to knee in pairs, we coached each other to help flesh out our own definition of fulfillment. I was struck by how many people in the room were moved to tears. When we regrouped afterward, I understood the tears hadn’t come from joy or recognition. It was the opposite. For many, it was the first time they’d had the space to realize the lives they were leading weren’t actually fulfilling them.

Here’s what makes this so difficult: no one will stop you to ask if your life is fulfilling. They’ll cheer your achievements, celebrate your promotions, and admire how you manage it all. The world rewards the pace — it doesn’t pause to question whether any of it actually matters to you.

Achievement and fulfillment ask for different things from us. Achievement thrives on speed — the next goal, the next win, the next milestone. And once you reach one, your mind is already scanning for the next. Fulfillment asks for something else entirely: presence, intention, a pace slow enough to actually feel your life. When achievement becomes the primary driver, it crowds out the conditions fulfillment needs. In the chase for more, fulfillment is often the one left behind.

And this becomes the ultimate price we pay — a pace that steals presence, which then steals intention, and ultimately steals fulfillment. Days slip into weeks, weeks into years, and we find ourselves wondering where the time went. Not in dramatic fashion, but quietly, day by day, until we can’t quite remember what we wanted in the first place.

If a fast pace is built through micro-choices, the way back is built the same way. The flywheel doesn’t stop all at once. Some of the simplest early steps involve removing the constant stream of stimulants we use to keep up. The extra caffeine to wake us, the news to inform us, the phone to connect us — each sends another signal: we need to stay alert, stay moving, stay prepared. Small shifts like these don’t change our lives overnight, but they begin to slow the spin just enough for larger choices to eventually come into view.

We have a new driver in our family. Beau recently turned sixteen, and even after several months behind the wheel, he still has one fear — merging onto the freeway. My instinct was to give him the standard advice: use the on-ramp to match the speed of traffic, drive confidently, and trust that others will make space. But as I heard myself explaining it, I caught the lesson that had been waiting for me for twenty-five years. You might try 13th Street instead. Just follow Sandy.