Under Grumpa's Hat

We were raised on urgency. Not the healthy kind, like running toward something meaningful, but the twitchy, stress-fuelled kind that lives in your shoulders and never quite clocks out. Hurry up. What are you doing. We’ll be late. Why did you do it that way. From the time we were small enough to lose mittens, life was a series of clocks tapping their watches at us. Catch the bus. Finish the homework. Eat faster. Tie your shoes properly. Uncle and aunty are waiting. You’ll be late for your hockey game. Someone, somewhere, was always waiting, and apparently they were not thrilled about it.

That rhythm followed us into adulthood like an overbearing supervisor who never retired. Time limit to write a test. Work faster. Respond quicker. Produce more. Explain yourself. Apologize for resting. Hustle was no longer a verb, it was a personality. Slowing down felt suspicious, like you were either lazy or plotting something. Even joy had a schedule. Vacations were booked, optimized, photographed, and recovered from. Rest became something you earned, usually after burning yourself to a crisp.

Then we landed in Costa Rica.

At first, it felt wrong. People were calm. Alarmingly so. Lines moved at their own pace, which was not our pace. Appointments were more like suggestions. A simple errand could turn into a conversation about weather, family, or absolutely nothing at all. Nobody seemed stressed about it. Nobody apologized for taking their time. It was deeply unsettling, like showing up to a fire drill and realizing nobody else heard the alarm.

Pura Vida was the phrase we heard everywhere, usually delivered with a smile that suggested they knew something we did not. At first, we translated it loosely as “no worries” or “all good,” which made it easy to dismiss as a tourist slogan. But then we felt it. In the way mornings unfolded without a starting gun. In the way coffee was sipped, not inhaled. In the way people looked at each other when they spoke, instead of glancing at their phones like nervous birds.

What really caught us off guard was the guilt. Or rather, the slow realization that it was fading. The first time we took a long walk with nowhere to be, we kept checking the imaginary clock in our heads. The second time, we checked less. Eventually, we stopped checking at all. Nothing bad happened. The world did not collapse. Nobody sent a passive-aggressive email asking where our productivity went. Life simply continued, only quieter, steadier, and oddly more alive.

Slowing down did not make us less capable. It made us more present. Conversations deepened. Meals lasted longer. Even problems felt more manageable when they were not being chased by a stopwatch. We started to notice how much of our old pace was fuelled by fear. Fear of being judged. Fear of falling behind. Fear that if we stopped moving, we might be seen, really seen, and found lacking.

Here is the uncomfortable truth. Much of the hurry we lived under was never truly necessary. It was inherited. Absorbed. Repeated without question. A cultural reflex passed down like a family recipe nobody remembers enjoying. Costa Rica did not teach us how to slow down. It reminded us that we were allowed to.

The moral is not that everyone should move to Costa Rica, though it does help if you like warm breezes and better priorities. The moral is that slowing down is not a failure of ambition. It is an act of self-respect. It is choosing to live your life at a speed where you can actually recognize it.

Feeling guilty for slowing down is like apologizing for breathing between sentences. You were never meant to sprint the entire way. Pura Vida is not about doing nothing. It is about doing what matters, without the constant whip crack of urgency at your back.

And once you feel that, once you learn it, going back to “hurry up” feels less like motivation and more like noise.