Despacio, Por Favor: What a Mexican Leather Maker Taught Me About Slowing Down

The Saturday market in San Angel, Mexico City buzzes with energy. I'm locked in what feels like a passionate chess match with a leather craftsman over a handcrafted belt. His Spanish flows like water, mine stumbles like a spilled glass of water.

The frustration builds in both our faces. We're so close to understanding each other, yet miles apart.

"Despacio, por favor," I manage to say. Slow down, please.

His weathered face breaks into a knowing smile. He throws me a lifeline, speaking slower, clearer. We both exhale. Within minutes, we shake hands on a price that leaves us both satisfied.

That phrase kept echoing through our five days in Mexico City. Not just the Spanish words, but what they represented.

The Addiction to More

I have this disease of maximization. This compulsive need to squeeze every drop of experience, productivity, and value from each moment. As if life were a lemon I could wring dry and I try to sell each ounce of liquid as lemonade.

Even writing "my time and my money" feels ridiculous. Like I actually own any of this.

The second day, my wife wasn't feeling well. Instead of letting her rest, I kept pushing my carefully crafted agenda. Museums to see, neighborhoods to explore, foods to try. The fear that if we didn't do it all, somehow the day would be incomplete, insufficient, wasted. What’s the point if you can’t do it all?

"Slow down, please," she said, but not in Spanish. In the universal language of exhaustion and hitting your limits.

The Grace Right in Front of Us

One of my close friends Ryan happened to be in town that night so we had drinks. During our hang, I confessed this compulsion. How I turn every experience into a performance review.

"The problem with always looking to the next thing," he said, "is that it robs you of the grace and beauty that's right in front of you."

That hit like a punch to the gut.

Here I was, trying to maximize our Mexico City experience, and I was missing Mexico City entirely. The mariachi music drifting from side streets. The way colonial buildings caught the afternoon light. The simple pleasure of watching Olivia's face light up as she described her morning.

Most importantly, I was missing being present with the person that means the most to me in this world. I had chosen getting things done and being busy over being present. All of it lost in my rush toward the next planned moment.

The dopamine of doing had trapped me in an endless cycle of ‘never enough’ and ‘always more’.

Ironically, here I am in the city that tends to sleep (afternoon siestas) coming with a New York mindset (the city that always sleeps). Instead of settling into the moment, slowing down and taking it all in, I was acting like an anxious street rat trying to escape the next looming threat amidst 8 million others trying to do the same.

The Masculine Trap of Optimization

There's something particularly masculine about this disease. We're taught to conquer, achieve, optimize. Time is money. Efficiency is king. Every moment must produce measurable value.

But life isn't a spreadsheet to be optimized. It's a song to be heard, a conversation to be had, a breath to be taken.

The most transformative moments of my trip weren't the ones I planned. They were the forced pauses. The negotiation with the leather maker. The unscheduled conversation over brunch. The moment I had to stop and actually listen.

These moments demanded presence. They couldn't be rushed, maximized, or optimized. They simply had to be experienced.

Learning to Calibrate

Jim Finley talks about how mystical teachings are like deep therapy work: "We learn to slow down to calibrate our heart to be very patient with subtle and delicate matters that we're not used to paying attention to."

This calibration feels vulnerable. It requires trust. It means finding more in the less, rather than constantly seeking more in the more.

It's like gazing at a newborn or sharing intimate silence with someone you love. Like standing at a graveside or walking through old growth forest. These moments take us out of time, out of our rational minds that constantly measure and evaluate.

The Fatal and the Useless

Richard Rohr writes about how it's "the things we can't do anything about (the fatal things) and the things we can't do anything with (the useless things), that truly change us."

The leather maker's pace was fatal. I couldn't control it. The conversation with my wife over brunch was useless by productivity standards. Neither fit my agenda. They confronted the question I refused to ask myself: “Am I more than what I do and what other’s think of me?”

Both changed me. Both stopped me in my tracks. The vulnerable surrender of realizing I didn’t have to try so hard, go so far or be so much.

A Different Way Forward

I'm learning that asking the world to slow down isn't weakness. It's wisdom. It's choosing depth over breadth, presence over productivity, being over doing.

This doesn't mean becoming lazy or disengaged. It means engaging with what's actually here instead of constantly reaching for what's next.

It means breathing deeply into this moment, this conversation, this breath.

Because maybe the fullest life isn't the one that accomplishes the most. Maybe it's the one that notices the most. That receives the most. That savors the most.

Despacio, por favor.

The leather maker understood something I'm still learning. Some things can't be rushed. Some conversations require patience. Some understanding only comes when we slow down enough to really listen. To pay attention long enough to understand.

Questions

• Where in your life are you moving too fast to actually experience what's happening?

• What would change if you viewed life as something to receive rather than achieve?

• What practices help you resist the rush and enter the present moment?

To read more about how I learned to physically slow down, check out my newest blog about what I learned running 50 miles.