When Bruce Feiler, the best-selling author of nine books, got the devastating diagnosis of bone cancer in his thigh, his twin daughters were three-years-old. Because of the surgery and treatment, he said, "Walking was the first thing I lost when I got sick." Eventually he got around on crutches. In his article he reflected about what he was learning from the new slower pace to his life:

The simplest consequence of walking on crutches is that you walk slower. Every step must be a necessary one. When you hurry, you get where you're going, but you get there alone. When you go slow, you get where you're going, but you get there with a community you've built along the way. At the risk of admission: I was never nicer than when I was on crutches.

In the 1840s, when walking was just becoming a source of recreation across Europe, a new type of pedestrian appeared in Paris. He was called a flâneur, one who ambled the arcades. One emblem of that idleness was the fashion among flâneurs to take turtles for walks and let the reptile set the pace.

As a paean to slow-moving, I love this notion, and it became my own wish for my daughters. Take a walk with a turtle. And behold the world in pause.