There’s a reading from Mark Nepo called The Pace of What Is Real that I’ve probably referenced a few hundred times by now. In it, there’s one line that has rooted itself so deeply in me that I think of it several times a day -

“Slow down the train that is me until what I pass by is again seeable, touchable, feelable.”

Lately this line has felt less like a gentle suggestion and more like a lifeline.

Because if I’m honest, life has been loud. A little too fast. A little too full. The kind of full where I wake up already halfway into the next thing, already feeling behind, already stretched thin before my feet even touch the floor. It’s amazing how quickly life can shift from being intentional to being a lot.

So I’ve been asking myself a simple but surprisingly confronting question -
“What is needed now?”

And the answer keeps arriving with the quiet clarity of truth -
You need less.

Not less joy. Not less connection. Not less aliveness.
But less noise. Less striving. Less of the unnecessary, the performative, the life I think I “should” be living.

What I need is space.
What I need is slowness.
What I need is to come back to what is real.

To sit with my family and actually feel that they’re there.
To move through my day without rushing through the moments that matter the most.
To look at the small, ordinary things and feel them again - the warmth of my morning mug, the softness of my son’s hair, the sunlight shifting across the floor.
To remember that a meaningful life isn’t built from speed, but from presence.

Sometimes life asks us to expand and sometimes, life asks us to soften our grip and simplify. To untangle ourselves from the pace of the world and return to our own pace. To dial down the overwhelm until we can hear ourselves again.

And for me, right now, the call is unmistakable -
Slow down. Simplify. Come home to what is true.

Maybe you’re feeling this, too. The fatigue from holding too much, the ache for something quieter, truer, more grounded. Maybe you’ve also been moving so fast that the world has become a blur.

If so, here’s the reminder I’m giving myself, and maybe it’s one for you, too -

You don’t have to outrun your life.
You’re allowed to slow the train.
You’re allowed to need less.
You’re allowed to find the pace of what is real.
(Again and again and again.)