New Coastie – The slow life – speed limits for the soul

There’s a point on Whangaparāoa Road, somewhere around the New World intersection, where you have no choice but to slow down. Someone’s turning into the parking lot of the shops, a learner driver is stalling, or more recently, all the road work due to the construction of our beloved O Mahurangi – Penlink. It’s the kind of thing that used to make me sigh heavily with agitation. Now, I just smile. I think of it as a metaphor for my life on the Coast. It is like a speed breaker for my life.

I didn’t always live at this pace. When I first moved here, I was still in “city mode”, measuring days in minutes, not moods. Everything had to be done fast and now. I’d try to get errands done quickly, rushing from the supermarket to the pharmacy and back again. But the Coast had other plans. Every quick shop turned into a little catch-up. Someone I knew would stop me by the bread aisle to talk about the weather, their dog, their life. At first, I found it very inconvenient. Now, I wouldn’t trade it for the world. In the city, when I saw someone, I knew, I would go, damn, there’s Josh, better not go into that aisle.  Now, I yell out, ‘Gidday, Josh, how goes it?’

Somewhere between the sea air and the sound of the waves, something in me shifted. I started taking my coffee outside on the deck in the morning, watching the light change on the water instead of checking my phone. My “power walks” along Stanmore Bay Beach slowed down too, not because I got unfit, but because there’s just too much worth noticing: lovers walking holding hands, dogs losing their minds with happiness, gulls arguing over a chip.

My bougie friends from the city complain that life on the Coast is too slow. They’re not wrong, but they’re missing the point. The slow life is not lazy; it is deliberate. It’s knowing that some things, like low tide or a good conversation, can’t be rushed.

Of course, it’s not all sunsets and serenity. There are days when Whangaparāoa Road annoys the living heck out of me, or when I miss the convenience of the city. But then I drive past the water at Arkles Bay and remember why I’m here. You can’t really stay stressed when the sea keeps reminding you to breathe.

Maybe that’s what makes this place special: we live on a peninsula, not a through-road. You don’t come through Whangaparāoa just to pick up a mince and cheese pie on your way to somewhere else – you come here. It’s the kind of geography that teaches you to slow down and stay awhile.

So, if you find yourself stuck behind someone meandering at 40Kph in a 60Kph zone, don’t rip your hair out. Maybe they’re new, maybe they’re daydreaming, or maybe, like the rest of us, they’ve just learned that not everything worth doing happens quickly. Out here, slowing down isn’t a sign of laziness. It’s just how we keep our souls from speeding.