Stop Running!

av Sarah Medhat

One day, I said to myself, “Stop running.” I was just working. My life was waking up for work and sleeping for work.

Sunset at Sundet 
(Photo by John Elhami)

I know how hard life can be, and how difficult it is to quiet my mind for a few minutes, whether I am thinking about the future or the past. But then I said to myself: I am not in a race to see who wins. I am only creating my own mental race. I tell myself: I must do this. I must achieve that. I must reach. I should change my life. And that will never happen without money. Even achieving my goals no longer brings happiness, because I have lost the sense of value. I am always looking for more.With all these self-imposed duties, I forget things far more important: God, others, the world around me, nature, and enjoying life simply.

I recall a line from the movie "Soul", when the pianist dreamed of performing on stage. When his dream came true, he asked his supervisor, “What will we do tomorrow?” She replied, “The same thing we did today.” He said, “I dreamed about this day my whole life; I expected it would feel different.” She then shared a story about a fish: one fish asked another, “I’m looking for the ocean. Where is it?” The other replied, “The ocean? We’re in it now.” That story made me realize something important: sometimes we spend all our energy running toward what we think will finally make us feel different, while forgetting to notice what already has value.

Over time, I began to feel exhaustion and burnout—both physically and mentally—because I had spent all my energy chasing a future that I thought would change everything. And then I started to realize that this problem is not only personal. It is also the spirit of the world we live in. 

In his encyclical letter Laudato Si´, Pope Francis speaks about excessive speed and how it affects our sense of responsibility toward our planet, making us feel that its suffering is our own. He explains that the continuous acceleration of life and work has created what he calls “rapidification.” Human life is moving faster and faster, but not always in a way that leads to the common good, sustainable development, or a better quality of life.

This helped me understand that the speed exhausting me personally is the same speed exhausting the world around me. We are not only burning ourselves out—we are also wearing out the earth. Everything has become available online. In many ways, life has become faster, easier, and more efficient. But at the same time, something human is being lost. We no longer need to meet people face to face. We no longer spend time with each other the same way. And little by little, we are losing not only slowness, but also connection.

There is another kind of sustainability called social sustainability, and it comes from real human connection. But how can social connection survive in a world shaped by competition, pressure, and invisible races—whether collective or personal—that we have created in our own minds?

Expressing appreciation has become a “like” on social media. Communication is reduced to WhatsApp messages. Support becomes a “share.”And in the middle of all this speed, there is often no time to truly meet one another, to listen, to interact, to plant a tree, or to volunteer for the community. All of this inevitably leads to what Pope Francis calls "the erosion of societies".

Northern lights through the Sundet trees
(photo by John Elhami)

At some point, I decided I did not want to keep living this way. What I did was simple: I stopped overthinking everything, and I stopped running after a future that I thought would save me.

Jasmijn once said in a gathering for young adults, “There is so much more in Jesus; we don’t have to search.” That sentence stayed with me. And being here in Sweden has become a great opportunity to be quiet, to slow down, and to notice how beautifully God created the earth—and to think about how we are called to care for it.

So I decided to look at the sky. To contemplate nature. To contemplate the forests, the tall trees, and the colors of the northern lights at night—they amaze me every time. To watch the sunrise and thank God for a new day illuminated by His light. To listen to the birds of the sky and remember what the Bible says: we are worth more than many birds. And in all of this, I began to see something deeply comforting: God loved me enough to create all this beauty around me—not only to survive in it, but also to simply enjoy it.

From the very beginning, we were given a special calling: not only to live on the earth, but also to care for it.

Genesis 2:15, “The Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and keep it.”