I became that person I was trying to rush away from.
Another Friday morning hike with fellow entrepreneurs. New friend. Long climb up the mountain.
We were talking about the brain under stress — how it functions like a completely different organ when we’re running on pressure. How it narrows. Optimizes. Stops seeing anything around except for what you need to get done.
My friend had taken some good time off work. And what he found was this recognition, that for quite a bit he became myopically work-focused. He noticed how transactional life had started to feel. Every conversation, every interaction filtered through the lens of deadlines and deliverables. And then the pressure lifted when he took that time off. Life started to look different. Wider. More human.
He came back to his next new chapter with one clear intention: he did NOT want to become that person again. The one optimizing every minute, every meeting, every moment for output and “getting” it.
I told him about a study I’d read in a book on behavioral science.
In 1973, Princeton psychologists John Darley and Daniel Batson ran one interesting experiment in social psychology. They took seminary students — people training to become priests and help others — and asked them to prepare a short talk on the parable of the Good Samaritan. The story, if you don’t know it, is about a man left injured on the road. A priest walks past. A Levite walks past. Only a stranger stops to help.
Then Darley and Batson sent the seminarians across campus to deliver their sermons.
Some were told: you have plenty of time. Others: you’re running a little late. And the final group: you need to go. Now.
Along the route, slumped in an alley, was a man. Coughing. Visibly distressed. Clearly in need of help.
Among the seminarians who had been told to hurry, only 10% stopped. Among those with time to spare, 63% stopped. One student, in his rush, literally stepped over the suffering man without acknowledging his existence.
Here’s what makes it interesting: the students who claimed they were motivated to be in the clergy for intrinsic reasons — because they felt a strong drive to help others — were no more likely to stop than anyone else. A simple situational factor, whether a person was in a hurry or not, played the dominant role in determining what they actually did.
They were on their way to preach about helping. And they walked straight past someone who needed it.
Researchers call this “narrowing of the cognitive map.” When we speed up and feel rushed, we miss details. We’re not present enough to notice what’s actually happening, what might be important.
Rush doesn’t just make us less present. It makes us less human.
And here’s where the mountain turned the mirror on me🪞
On the way back down — me moving faster now, trying to get back and start my day, trying to get back to “getting things done” — my friend stopped to say hello to people on the path. Chatted. Lingered. Noticed.
I kept moving.
Without realizing it, I had become the rushing person. Trying to optimize, chasing meaning, directed to the next thing every moment. Terrified of wasting time of my life. So focused on being present that I was present for none of it.
My friend said something very insightful at the end of the hike:
“I think you might need to let go of that need for control a bit — to let life bring to you what’s meant to be there. That’s how I used to be.”
I knew he was right.
But it took someone holding up a mirror for me to see what I couldn’t notice myself.
This reminded me.
No matter how many tools you practice. No matter how many years of self-work you accumulate. You will still drift. You will still rush without noticing. You will still remain human.
Which means you have to design the moments where you stop.
Not to get something. Not to extract meaning or optimize the pause. Just to stop. To recalibrate. To be available to whatever life is trying to put in your path.
Meditation masters don’t eliminate anxious thoughts. They just return to calm faster — because they know it’s always there. One shift of attention away.
Maybe that’s the whole practice. Not eliminating the rush. Just catching it sooner.
What has the rush been costing you, and what would you notice if you slowed down enough to look?