MOVE TOO SLOW
A couple of weeks ago, I was working at my desk, trying to stay focused, but also handling several other minor pieces of business simultaneously Texts and emails were lighting up my devices periodically throughout, and I was meeting those with what felt like a manageable, rhythmic volley — responding immediately to some, flagging others for later reply, adding items to my to-do list and calendar. I was getting things done.
The sound of regurgitating cats is a familiar background noise in our home. So at first, when I heard that commencing in the other room, I just made a mental note, putting “clean up vomit” on my list for later. But then I realized that the cat was on the couch. And then I saw that she was hunched over a script that I’d left open there. So I ran to the kitchen, grabbed a dishtowel, and raced back to the living room, where I simultaneously unfurled the towel before her and whisked the script out from under her. (It was like the old magic trick with the tablecloth, where one pulls away the cloth without disturbing the fancy place settings of china, silver, and crystal.)
She puked copiously, but I managed to spare the script and the couch, mostly.
Just as I was congratulating myself for my quick thinking and lightning reflexes, I heard a voice say, “Move too slow.” What? I checked my phone to see if I had dialed someone accidentally, but no. Neither was anything playing on my laptop. Travis wasn’t home. The television was off. Strange. I figured I’d imagined it.
An hour or so later, I had fetched a cup of coffee and was returning to my desk from the kitchen when I heard it again. A woman’s voice clearly saying, “Move too slow.” Who could this be, and why was she accusing me of dawdling? Didn’t she realize that I was being exceptionally productive? I was ahead of schedule, in fact, and thinking that I might have time for a walk in the afternoon if I kept up this neat pace. How dare she?! Once again, I couldn’t figure out whence the voice came.
When it happened a third time, “Move too slow,” a few minutes later, I’d had enough. The reprimand was emitting from Travis’s side of the office. It didn’t seem like something he’d do, but I considered briefly that he might be playing a cruel practical joke on me. I looked all over his desk, trying not to topple any of the stacks of books and papers and candles and “organizational” boxes and writing implements that teeter there like surreal Dr. Seuss skyscrapers from a bureaucratic hellscape. But I found nothing that could be making any noise, certainly nothing that could be criticizing me.
So I texted him at work, an S.O.S. high-priority message to Travis: “Am I losing my mind, or is there a woman’s voice judging me from behind your desk, saying ‘MOVE TOO SLOW’?!”
He replied, “I bought a new speaker a couple of days ago. I think it’s in the TJ Maxx bag on the floor, and it’s probably saying, ‘Bluetooth Mode.’ But —“ he added, “I think, ‘Move Too Slow’ is a good sermon title.”
And here we are.
One probably doesn’t need a psychology degree to figure out that my mishearing of the phrase was coming from an unconscious sensitivity about pace and productivity. So, I’m looking at that.
I’m also wondering how I may be influenced in countless unknown ways by this world that seems constantly to bombard us with messages to hurry up, move it along, pick up your feet. There are never enough hours in the day or days in the week or years in a life. And furthermore, we’re probably not enough to maximize the little time we do have. I am pretty sure that I’m hearing that, getting that message loud and clear, even when nobody’s actually using those words to say it.
Finally, it occurred to me that “Move too slow” might not be a criticism. It could be an instruction. It could be a generous and commodious suggestion to proceed with deliberate slowness, more slowly than we think we need to go. To adopt a measured and leisurely pace on purpose, in counterpoint to the world’s relentless admonishment to “get going-going-gone.”
Maybe it’s not even “too” but “to.” Move to slow. Move in a way that slows the rest of it all down.
Here’s a poem from Brian Bilston:
Send me a slow news day,
a quiet, subdued day,
in which nothing much happens of note,
save for the passing of time,
the consumption of wine,
and a re-run of Murder, She Wrote.
Grant me a no news day,
a spare-me-your-views day,
in which nothing much happens at all,
except a few hours together,
some regional weather,
a day we can barely recall.
I can’t wait to be with you this Sunday, February 22, 10:00am at q-Staff Theatre. With the divine Patty Stephens. XO, Drew
©2026 Drew Groves
