Over the last few months my friend Antony Quinn and I have been thinking about the quality of being unhurried. It seems to us that there’s a lot of pressure to get a move on in life, but that the best craftsmanship and the wiser life choices tend to me made not under great pressure, but when we’re able to pause and reflect. It’s so easy to get into a vicious circle where a difficult issue arises, creates stress and we then get into a panic… narrowing our perspective and making us frantic.
In relationships and groups, a lot of distress is often caused not by the apparent matter at hand, but by conflicts of pace. For example, when people are interrupting each other because of anxiety about time, it’s hard to generate much wisdom.
Unhurried doesn’t necessarily mean slow. Antony observes that a tennis player at the top of his game will be very fast – but they will also be in flow, able to make judgements over fine details.
Anyway, we’re developing this idea of unhurried as a way of working. And we’re offering a small scale, free, exploration on Thursday 6th March in Cambridge. It’s partially inspired by previous workshops on difficult conversations, but we’re calling this one (unsurprisingly) Unhurried Conversations. More details here.
Come along for an unhurried conversation about… well any topic you choose to bring. We’d love to see you there.
