Time, Space, Connection

Time flows differently here. My body knows it within a few days. Slower. Quieter. Something in me that has been held tight for months starts to unclench. The diversity, the culture, the space. Nature, wildlife, the unhurried attention people have for each other. Time for a chat with a local artist, a stop at a small bakery. It feels like back in the day, but within the modern world.

South Africa.

Less control. Less driven by output and efficiency. More connection. It is something I talk about a lot within my horse work, but living it brings it to a different place. In the western world, there is less and less space for connection. We overwork until we start to resent the jobs we once dreamt of. Our agendas are so scheduled that we need to plan a coffee with a friend. Shops are open from early morning to late at night. We keep rushing, keep being busy. We race to a festival to connect. But everyone is in their own individual world. We forgot how to just be.

I am a part of it. I'm wired for it. Whether the pressure comes from the outside or from the inside, I perform. And I perform hard. And I lose myself.

But is that when I do my deepest work?

Being in overdrive is efficient. And sometimes it is exactly what is needed. There are moments in any creative process when you have to go all in, give everything, ride the wave while it is there. In life. In art. In training a horse. Overdrive is not the enemy. The trouble starts when overdrive becomes the only gear. When we never come down. When we rush from one thing to the next without ever landing, without ever integrating, without ever letting what we just did actually settle inside us. Then the doing eats itself. We do more and feel less. We produce more and connect less. We move faster and arrive at nothing.

I started studying art around the same time I started really diving into horsemanship. And the longer I do both, the more I see they are the same craft. A piece of art is not made by pure overdrive. It is not made by pure stillness either. It is made in the rhythm between the two. You make a move, you pause. You seek meaning, authenticity, you build, you step back. You give, and then you listen for what the work wants next. The best pieces come from that listening. From the kind of attention that cannot be rushed.

Horses taught me the same thing, in a much more direct way. They show me what I cannot always see in myself. They taught me to slow down. To observe before acting. To trust the process without needing to know the outcome. To choose connection over control. To let something arrive instead of forcing it through. That is how I train horses. I cannot rush a real conversation. I cannot force trust. I show up. I listen. I follow what the horse is offering. And what comes from that is always far richer than anything I could have engineered.

South Africa gives me that same feeling. Not as a lesson. As a way of living. Being here is a reminder that another pace exists. That people can move through a day without the constant low hum of urgency underneath everything. And that is beautiful. And that is also hard.

Because once you know there is another way, you cannot unknow it. You feel it in your body when you are in it. The presence. The connection. To people, to horses, to the land. The way time stops being something to manage and just becomes something you live. And then you go home. To Western society. And you feel everything that is not that. The pressure of society. The invisible expectation to produce, to respond, to show up, to perform. The never-ending feeling that slowing down equals falling behind.

I try to bring South Africa’s wisdom with me. I consiously built more space into my days. More room to be. To connect. To live a life where I can breathe. But slowly the space I created starts to fill. I try to protect it at first, but I give in to the pressure I feel. The business rushes in. A client with an urgent problem. A few more students, because the room is there. An opportunity that feels wrong to decline. And quietly, without noticing, I give in. I fill the space I fought to create. And I perform. To do more. To be more efficient. And slowly I lose the connection again. To all that truly matters to me. To my human. To my beautiful family. To my awesome friends. To my horses. To the land we live on.

I lose myself. Again.

And they are patient. The land is patient. The trees are patient. My human is patient. My own horses, they are patient. They wait. They all are top priority. But when life is hectic, they are not on the urgency list. Deadlines are loud. You have to keep up with the pace, or you fall behind.

“We’re busy rushing time that never comes back.”

Coming back from South Africa, I realize it more than ever. My horses are getting older. I am getting older. In my head I am still 30. In my head my horses are still 6. My parents are still 50. But time ticks on. The years are passing. They are passing fast. I never wanted to become the person who looks back and says: I should have spent more time with the ones I love most. The ones that matter most. But here I am. Becoming that person. The one who is going to regret. Who realizes too late. The things I wanted to do. That matter to me. In life. With them. In connection.

Perhaps the things that feed us most deeply are rarely the things that feel most urgent. They are patient. They will wait. And we move toward pressure. As a survival mechanism. We respond to what demands our attention. And the quiet things, the essential things, the ones that hold us together, we push to later.

I do not have an answer. But I carry the question with me.

I have been to South Africa many times now. And every time I go home, I bring a little of its wisdom with me. Another pace. A way of looking at the day. At life. A reminder that another way exists. The challenge is not finding that way once. The challenge is choosing it again, and again, and again, in a society that does not.

That is the work. Not the South Africa version of it. The Tuesday morning version. The full inbox version. The deadline version. To remember, in the middle of all that, that the deepest work, in art, in life, in love, in horses, does not come from doing more. It comes from knowing when to move forward, and when to pause. When to integrate. When to make time for what truly matters. A rhythm between doing and being. Between overdrive and ‘just’ being and having the time to enjoy all hard work. Between making things happen, and letting them arrive instead of forcing them through. Not rushing toward the next big thing. Being in what already is. In gratefulness.

That is what South Africa keeps teaching me. That is what my horses keep teaching me. And every time I come back home, I am a little more able to choose it.

Not to escape my life.

To remember how to live it.