A quiet city, a wise woman, and the reminder that purpose isn’t something to perform.
Kyoto hums in hush tones.
No motorbikes, just bicycles gliding by, even the Mama-chari bikes carrying two kids move like they’ve got nowhere to rush.
The air is soft.
The water, impossibly clear. I caught myself wondering what invisible care kept it that way.
Every corner seems to whisper the same thing:
breathe again.
Some of that quiet came from my friends: Vale and Sam, passing through from Europe to New Zealand with two small kids.
Their lives are feather-light.
Vale does aerial arts under a seven-metre rig by their beach house;
Sam tends gardens and time itself.
They cook slow breakfasts.
They laugh easily.
They seem unbothered by the race the rest of us are still running.
Even their four-year-old carried Kyoto’s rhythm,
stopping to touch the river, to notice a wood horse,
to point out what the adults missed.
He moved with wonder
while we, the grown-ups, hurried past it.
Maybe that’s what adulthood steals first,
the permission to walk slowly.
That stillness followed me all the way to Kyoto Airport.
While waiting to board, I opened my phone.
Jane Goodall had died. 91.
The woman who first taught me to love the natural world
had quietly returned to it.
“Each and every one of you has a role to play.
You may not know it, you may not find it, but your life matters.
Every single day you live, you make a difference in the world.
And you get to choose the difference that you make.”
Between the boarding gates, tears surprised me.
I’d spent months chasing ways to make money:
funnels, content calendars, the anxiety of staying visible.
And here was Jane, whispering the simplest permission:
not knowing is okay.
My friends already live that truth: grounded, grateful, unhurried.
Their kids practise it too, pebble by pebble, ripple by ripple.
We don’t have to perform our purpose.
We just have to live it.
✨ That’s the real pathless path.
If this resonated, share it with someone who needs the reminder to slow down.
