In Defense of Slow Walkers

My Saturday morning walk back home after picking up an overpriced pumpkin latte has recently become a sacred fall ritual. It serves as a weekly form of meditation, where I can reclaim the rhythm of my chaotic life in a deliberate stride. So when someone interrupts this carefully curated pace by tailgating me as if it’s 5 p.m. traffic hour, it feels like far more than a physical intrusion. 

As students begin to adjust to campus this fall and resume attending lectures, the complaint about slow walkers begins to resurface. From cars honking at me while crossing Devon Avenue to getting lost in a sea of students showing their ID cards at the Damen entrance, it’s easy to feel like an obstacle on par with a traffic cone.

However, in a literal sense, let’s stop for a moment. Are slow walkers truly a hindrance to arriving from Point A to Point B, or is the American culture overly conditioned to expect efficiency and handle the fact not everyone wants to live their life in constant rush?

The most prominent issue I have with the rhetoric against slow walkers is there are people who cannot control their pace. A slower pace is oftentimes the result of disability, injury, age or even fatigue. In effect, it’s easy to argue this fast-paced agenda creates the expectation sidewalks are only welcome to young, healthy, non-disabled individuals. This potential to unknowingly foster an exclusionary mindset reveals how impatience can lead young adults down some ethically windy roads. 

Moreover, let’s not overlook the easy argument — slow walking is objectively more appealing. Think about the movie or music video scenes when a primary character makes an unforgettable entrance in slow motion. From O-Ren Ishi’s entrance in “Kill Bill,” to Emma Stone strutting down her high school hallway in “Easy A,” walking slowly commands a presence in contrast to speed walkers frantically rushing with their backpack bouncing against them. 

However, the power walkers have a point. As busy students, there’s no other choice than to equate productivity with speed. The labyrinth of American society can’t just be lazied into. Modern-day American work culture tasks workers with optimizing as much time and energy as possible. Slow walkers can be a physical barrier to meeting necessary goals.

And so, the tired senior on her morning coffee stroll is now a stand-in for everything the American productivity mindset teaches people to fear — falling behind, missing out, preventing destiny from being achieved. But what if slow walking was reframed as a form of resistance in a society where the ability to enjoy the present moment is villainized?

Try taking some time to join the slow walkers as fall rolls around. Once the time is taken to slow down, the world might begin to shine in a new luminous way.