It’s a fifteen to twenty minute walk from my friend’s apartment to Union Station where I catch the Red line Metro to Tenley Town and then a walk or shuttle ride to American University and the campus of The Wesley Theological Seminary. Everyday I make that walk both ways, seeing some of the same people at the same time as we head to and from our days. I pass by two preschools and watch parent’s bring their kids thinking that it’s still five hours before my own preschooler will head to class on the other side of the country. Every morning between seven and seven thirty I am also reminded that the further East I go in this country the earlier people seem to be headed places and the bigger hurry they seem to be in to get there. If you are on the East coast of the United States they will say that people slow down the further West you get, but being from the West it certainly feels like it’s just that we aren’t ever in as much of a hurry. Even when I am a little later than I planned to be, and I feel like I am walking briskly, I am passed by nearly everyone; young and old, male and female. It’s a little funny to me because once you get to the escalators on the way down to the Metro trains those same people who speed walked by me are just standing on the escalator letting it take them at its own languid pace failing to see the irony as i step past them. I can’t help but wonder if everyone is always running late here, or if they really just move faster. Washington DC is a little different from some other cities like New York or Boston, but still the pace is intense at times. I have written about the unwritten rule of not talking to others when riding the Metro, and I wonder if some of that has to do with this hurry. When I ask someone on the train how their day is going they often react as though no one has asked them that in the longest time. When you move so fast you don’t always have time to even say hello much less to really ask how someone is doing. it’s not even that people aren’t friendly, it’s that when the pace is fast you forget. I have been with whole groups of these fast moving people who have deep relationships that play out on Friday evening at packed restaurants where you may not eat until ten or eleven at night, but you don’t care because you finally feel like you can slow down. It’s almost like because of the pressure to move so fast during the week it makes people that much more intentional about slowing down and using every moment of the weekend. I trying to criticize the pace, but rather simply to take note of it. Living in the Western U.S. there are times we could use a little hurry or even some sense of urgency. Living on an island though hurry does not exist, which suits me just fine, but I respect the pace of others too. i don’t think it has anything to do with getting more done or working harder or even efficiency, it just seems to be what it is. I do meet people who genuinely feel that what they are doing here is so important that they hurry because they just need to get things done. I guess if i am honest I appreciate a slower pace where things start later and people take the time to say, “hello, how are you?” but to each their own pace and I respect an intentionality of time. Whatever the pace, it needs to be your pace, your walk, and you should own it.