This week I’m writing from Goa. Time moves differently here. Days stretch, meals linger, conversations meander. No one seems in a hurry to arrive anywhere else. It’s a place shaped by encounter and by blending.

There’s one word that keeps coming up here: susegado. It loosely translates as calm, contented, unhurried. And speak to the locals and you discover that it means more than pace. Full disclosure: pace is part of my DNA. I’ve often equated speed with efficiency and problem-solving with productivity. This place asks for something else.

Susegado is a posture. A way of being in the world that values ease without apathy, slowness without disengagement, intention without aggression.

Goa lives between worlds. Once a thriving port, shaped by centuries of Portuguese rule, it carries its history visibly yet lightly. Catholic churches sit alongside Hindu temples. Konkani, Portuguese, and English weave their way through everyday speech. Curries carry coconut, vinegar, and the unmistakable heat of green chillies. Bread arrives warm, to be dipped into dishes that speak of the Konkan coast. Each dish carries a story, passed down rather than perfected.

Historically, Goa has endured conquest, trade, conversion, resistance, and reinvention. Yet it maintained its rhythm. While life at home often runs on optimisation, life here seems to resist that logic. People sit. Watch. Talk. Eat. Eat again. This place adapts without rushing and absorbs without disappearing. There’s a quiet confidence in that. A knowing that we can be more than one thing without losing ourselves.

Being here with family sharpens the moment. The days insist on presence. Morning light emerging through palms. Afternoon heat demanding rest. Evenings carrying conversation, food, and music. There’s an ease that returns when you’re surrounded by people who know your history without needing explanation. Laughter comes easily. Silence doesn’t need filling. The pace slows not because nothing is happening, but because what matters has room to unfold.

As I sit here, I find myself reflecting on why pace feels so urgent at home. How often I measure my worth through output: deliver, execute, generate. I wonder whether that drive for output reduces my capacity to experience. Whether I confuse urgency with importance. Whether I reward speed over sense-making. Whether pace has quietly become my proxy for progress, even when it comes at the expense of depth, coherence, or care.

So this week, I’m sitting with one idea: that slowness may not be the absence of ambition, but the presence of discernment. The courage to allow new ideas and perspectives to emerge. To listen rather than solve. To create space for ease, for discomfort, and for growth. To allow clarity to surface.

Goa offers a model where multiple influences coexist without being flattened into a single story. Where time is allowed to do quiet work. Where susegado isn’t about doing less, but about doing things at a pace that allows integration.

Maybe that’s the deeper lesson from Goa. That meaning lives in integration, in holding contradictions, in letting cultures, histories, and people shape one another without forcing consensus. Susegado is about stepping into life open to perspective.

When life slows, we notice what once passed us by. We remember who we are when we stop measuring our steps or racing to be productive. We reconnect to being without justification, to family without agenda, to work without urgency. Most importantly, we reconnect to ourselves.

This week

Reach in: Notice where your life feels rushed. What might be asking you to slow down and pay attention?

Reset: Choose one thing to do with susegado. A meal. A conversation. A decision. Let it take the time it takes.

Reach out: Share food with someone you love this week and sit longer than planned. Let connection set the pace.