There’s this show I love — The Bear.
Not because it’s relaxing (it’s not), but because it feels real. It holds a mirror. To grief. To obsession. To the kind of pressure that looks like passion, but really isn’t.

It starts off loud, chaotic, fast. People yelling over each other. Orders flying. Grief simmering under every plate. And in the middle of it: Carmy, running, full speed, with his "shoelaces untied".

You watch him work like his life depends on it. Maybe it does. He’s brilliant. Precise. Passionate. But also emotionally unavailable, avoidant, and self-sabotaging in ways that feel almost too real.

He clings to perfection, but not peace. He creates problems — changes the menu again, picks at the plan again — just to stay busy. Because stillness would mean facing what’s underneath. And when something good finally happens, he runs. He bails, sabotages it before it can leave him first.

He doesn’t know how to receive love without guilt. Doesn’t know how to hold joy without fearing its loss. So he runs — faster, louder, sharper — hoping the noise will drown out the ache.

Every so often, he admits it:

“I think I put a lot of things in the way of dealing with very real things…
like changing the menu every day, not communicating, not apologizing…
just being a menace in general.” 

Because slowing down would mean remembering. It would mean sitting with the grief. The rejection. The ache of wanting to be seen. It would mean confronting everything he buried beneath the noise. And he’s not ready for that.

In the fine-dining world, he didn’t just learn skill — he absorbed trauma. His past employer didn’t just teach him technique. He taught him that being broken was a prerequisite for greatness. That you had to bleed for your craft. That success looked like exhaustion and pain.

That’s the thing about working under someone like that:
it makes you feel like your pain isn’t real. So you bury it. You push harder. You hurt people around you, thinking that’s just how it’s done.

And I get it.
I think a lot of us do.

We’ve all had moments where we confused urgency with purpose. Kept moving because we were scared of what would happen if we stopped. Felt like if we slowed down, everything would fall apart — or worse, we’d have to sit with ourselves. But running with your laces untied only works for so long.

What The Bear reminded me is this:
You don’t have to chase stillness — you can choose it.

There’s a difference between quitting and slowing down. Between being lazy and actually processing. Between doing nothing and doing something that simply looks quieter from the outside.

We talk a lot about pace in life — how fast we should be moving, where we should be by now. But who decides that?

There’s no universal map for a good life.
No race.

Only presence.
Attention.
And the bravery of choosing your own rhythm.

Even if it’s just to stop, bend down, and tie our shoes. That short pause might be the one thing that stops you from ending up like Carmy.

I hope those stuck in something rough — something toxic or heavy or just quietly unsustainable — find the courage or the luxury to make a choice. To leave. To rest. To slow down and deal with what needs to be felt and faced.

If you’re someone like Sydney, a person working with Carmy — Would you stay in an intense workplace, hoping it will get better? Would you take a chance on someone who is self-sabotaging? Or would you leave, and go build something softer somewhere else?

There’s no right answer.
But the asking matters.

P.S. If you’ve lingered here until the very last word — thank you.
Here’s a gift for fellow slow souls: use "slowdown" at checkout.