May We Still Know How to Love Someone Slowly

I have always loved Mu Xin’s Once, Life Moved Slowly.

Perhaps what I love is not simply the vanished world within the poem, but the way of living it quietly remembers: people were in less of a hurry, roads did not always need to be rushed, words did not have to be finished at once, and loving someone did not immediately require an answer.

Once, journeys were slow and letters travelled far. To miss someone was to accept the long distance between longing and arrival.

A letter had to be written by hand, folded carefully, and placed inside an envelope. A name written on paper would travel through one city, and then another. By the time it finally reached the person it was meant for, the moon that shone on the night it was written might already have waned and grown full again.

And perhaps it was precisely because everything took time that words were not spoken carelessly. A meeting felt important. A promise carried weight. And one person could remain in another person’s heart for a very long time.

Then the world became faster.

Messages began to arrive in an instant. Two people separated by thousands of miles could speak whenever they wished. A distant city became only a few hours away. And somehow, even affection and departure seemed to learn how to move faster.

We rarely wait for letters anymore, yet we spend so much time waiting for replies. We seldom cross half a city simply to see someone, yet we find ourselves looking at a screen, wondering whether a certain name will light up.

The world has become faster and faster, but the human heart does not seem to have become any easier to reach.

Sometimes I think what we truly miss is not the past itself, but the sincerity of people who were willing to give their time completely to something.

To wait until spring truly arrived before going to see the flowers. To spend an entire afternoon finishing a pot of tea. To cross half a city simply because someone was waiting there. To let affection rest quietly inside the years, without demanding that it bloom, without asking too quickly what it might become.

Time was not something to chase. It was something to live inside.

And so, whenever I return to Once, Life Moved Slowly, I feel less and less that it is merely a poem about nostalgia.

It feels more like a quiet reminder: in an age when almost everything can be accelerated, we should still protect the few things that cannot — and perhaps should not — be hurried.

Finishing a book.
Sitting down for a proper meal.
Listening to someone’s story until the very end.
Learning to understand another person’s silence.
Loving someone with care.

Because the things that matter most rarely respond well to being rushed.

Trees grow one year at a time. Tea is drunk one sip at a time. Evening darkens little by little. And whatever grows between two people deserves the same permission to unfold slowly.