Weeknote 35/2025: The view from the coffee shop
One lap, one coffee shop, one lesson in influence and stillness.
Hello!
The conditions were perfect for exercise, a mixture of dry weather with not too much sun. I was keen to continue this new habit of starting the weekend with a parkrun, to steadily rebuild muscle mass and stamina after a year of relative inactivity.
Saturday's parkrun lasted exactly one lap. My calf muscle delivered its verdict with the clarity of a telegram: stop. stop. STOP!
Not the negotiable slow down of minor discomfort, but the absolute STOP of tissue refusing to cooperate.
In that single stride, my carefully planned day collapsed. Most of us retreat to domestic exile at such moments: the sofa, the remote, familiar geography of wounded pride. I was perfectly ready to settle in for a day of television-assisted wallowing when my partner and son suggested something different: join them at a coffee shop with my laptop while they ran errands.
Becoming the hub
What began as their gentle rescue from my impulse to avoid and escape became something more interesting. Anchored at a central table in the coffee shop, I found myself occupying an unexpected role: the fixed point around which others moved. My partner and son appeared at intervals with bags and updates. Coffee and snacks arrived unasked. I became, almost accidentally, the communications hub of our distributed Saturday operation.
The parallel to Hitchcock's Rear Window was too apt to ignore. Like LB Jefferies, confined to his wheelchair, I discovered that immobility wasn’t a precursor to irrelevance. From my surveillance post, I began to appreciate a different kind of participation in the world's theatre.
The art of observation
From there, it was a short step to noticing how much comes into view when you stop moving. Between lesson planning, a little recreational coding, and catching up with long-time friends Alan and Ross on social media - sharing new albums and continuing our positive habit of exchanging glimpses of our weekend lives - I found myself increasingly drawn into the small dramas around me: a family squeezed around a tiny table next to me, sharing lunch while arguing over which shops deserved priority; an older man who spent his visit chatting with strangers, never once opening his laptop - clearly there for company, not connectivity; groups of teenagers using the coffee shop's periphery as neutral territory, disguising the ancient ritual of flirtation in seemingly casual encounters.
These weren't idle distractions but insights into human choreography that walking speed would have rendered invisible. The forced deceleration had shifted me into some sort of accidental anthropology. It wasn’t just about watching others. It began to reshape how I valued my own role.
Redefining value
The previous week, I was consumed by the metrics of the parkrun, not least because I was pleasantly surprised at how close to my previous 5k times I’d managed. This week, those same metrics and others would have judged me more harshly: miles not covered, plans abandoned, ambitions literally hobbled. However, when direct action became impossible - and I was forced to get over myself - other forms of value emerged. I became useful not for what I could do, but for who I could be: the steady centre others could navigate by.
This role reversal was unsettling. How often had I measured worth by miles logged, tasks completed, page views, downloads, and more? The injury forced a recalibration, suggesting that influence might be less about driving events than creating stable conditions for events to unfold. Psychologist Steven Hayes calls this psychological flexibility: the ability to accept what we cannot change while remaining open to what can emerge from the new circumstances we find ourselves in. My family had gently prodded me into shifting from avoidance to acceptance, and in that shift, unexpected possibilities were revealed.
The reward of slowing down
Later, hobbling through a nearby shop with my son, I spotted headphones I'd contemplated for years - on sale - perfectly priced. The serendipity illustrated how pace shapes possibility. If I were moving at full speed, I would have missed this opportunity. It’s like we develop tunnel vision, and our attention narrows to predetermined paths. Slow down, and the peripheral world comes into focus, rich with opportunities invisible to those rushing by.
The calf muscle had been trying to tell me something that my mind was too busy to hear: not only about overextension. There are discoveries available only to the stationary or slow-moving, insights that require stopping long enough to notice what might have been there all along.
Balance, that overused concept, might be less about perfect equilibrium than perfect responsiveness, and the body, in its ancient wisdom, occasionally knows what we need before the mind catches up.
That Saturday, my calf played an unwelcome but prescient editor, cutting the day to essentials and revealing productivity I'd never thought to measure. Like Jefferies discovering his window offered the best seat in the house, I learned that stillness isn’t absence. At times, the most powerful choice is to pause, see clearly, and allow the world to organise itself around your attention.
So if your weekend plans don’t go as expected, maybe that’s an invitation to pause, notice, and let the world come to you. You might be surprised at what you discover.
Thanks for reading and have a great week xx