Do you feel that your days pass too quickly? Do you wish you could slow things down? Maybe get more pleasure out of each moment?

Antonia Malchik (A Walking Life) says that daily walks will help: “When we walk, time slows down, and our multitasking brains rest and reconnect with our creative selves—We become more human.”

Frederick Gros (A Philosophy of Walking) concurs: “Days of walking are very long: they make you live longer because you have allowed every hour, every minute, every second to breathe, to deepen.” Walking “stretches time,” making “the seconds fall one by one, drop by drop like the steady dripping of a tap on stone.”

Gros calls walking “a good slowness,” whose opposite is not speed but haste. He says it is an illusion to say that speed “saves” time. “Haste and speed accelerate time, which passes more quickly, and two hours of hurry shorten a day.”

So when I catch myself saying I don’t have time for walking, I’ll remind myself of the truth:

I don’t have time not to walk!