I'm fascinated by the felt experience of rushing, because It seems that rushing can be a sneaky two for the price of one type of deal; we may mean one thing by it, but we usually get something extra as well, something that's easy to miss.

We usually use rush to mean simply "to move quickly". I am late for work, so I will rush in order to get there on time. That makes sense, and my interest would stop there if that were the whole story.

But it's not the whole story.

Consider that felt experience of rushing. It's usually also stressful in some way. Rushing creates a generalised tension in our bodies. There's a strong need for the rushed experience to be completed, a kind of embodied "come on already, come on, come on".

To me, this experience is markedly different from merely moving quickly. Olympic sprinters don't rush, even though they move as fast as they possibly can. Olympic sprinters know and fully accept that running 100m takes as long as it takes. Their aim is for it to take as little time as possible, yes, but they don't begrudge how long it takes. Those ten seconds from starting block to finish line don't annoy them.